SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI announced Friday a massive $110 billion funding round valuing the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, with SoftBank, Nvidia and Amazon each making multi-billion-dollar commitments as the artificial intelligence company races to meet surging global demand.&nbsp;The investment round -- one of the largest in Silicon Valley history -- includes $30 billion from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, $30 billion from chip giant Nvidia, and up to $50 billion from Amazon, with additional investors expected to join as the round progresses.&nbsp;Alongside the capital injection, OpenAI announced strategic partnerships with both Amazon, the world&#39;s biggest cloud company through its AWS division, and Nvidia, whose AI chips remain unparalleled in their capacity for AI training.&nbsp;&quot;SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon are long-term partners who share our ambition to turn real scientific progress into systems that deliver meaningful benefits for people at global scale,&quot; OpenAI said in a statement.&nbsp;The eye-watering level of funding reflects the soaring costs of computing power and comes amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover those costs.&nbsp;The Amazon investment will begin with $15 billion, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met, the companies said.&nbsp;According to reports, these include OpenAI going public or achieving artificial general intelligence, a sometimes ill-defined standard of AI capability that more closely matches human-level ability.&nbsp;OpenAI and Amazon also struck a deal in which the ChatGPT maker will use two gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon&#39;s in-house Trainium chips.&nbsp;Amazon&#39;s cloud computing rival Microsoft, which did not participate in the funding round, remains a major shareholder of OpenAI and a strategic partner.&nbsp;In the announcement, OpenAI cited a series of user metrics pointing to a breakneck pace of AI adoption.&nbsp;Even if short of its previous forecasts, ChatGPT now counts more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million paying consumer subscribers, with January and February on track to be the platform&#39;s biggest-ever months for new subscriptions, the company said.&nbsp;It added that more than nine million businesses pay to use ChatGPT for workplace tasks, while its Codex software development tool has seen weekly users more than triple since the start of the year to 1.6 million.&nbsp;The figures are intended to reassure more skeptical investors who have questioned OpenAI&#39;s ability to secure revenue, with user growth for its flagship ChatGPT slowing.&nbsp;The company this month began rolling out advertising for its non-premium users in a bid to bring in more revenue.&nbsp;According to The Information tech news, OpenAI now predicts that it will burn more than twice as much cash through 2030 than previously predicted, spending $665 billion on the costs of running and training its AI.&nbsp;Competition has ramped up too.&nbsp;Arch-rival Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, continues to gain ground and grab headlines for its well-regarded Claude AI models.&nbsp;Anthropic earlier this year secured a $30 billion funding round.&nbsp;Google&#39;s AI model Gemini has also emerged as a potent competitor, with Elon Musk&#39;s xAI also attracting investment and users.

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI announces a $110 billion funding round valuing it at $730 billion, with major backing from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon, as it expands partnerships, scales computing capacity, and accelerates growth amid rising costs and intensifying AI competition.

OpenAI raises $110 bn in record funding round

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ISLAMABAD: White House trade adviser Peter Navarro raised questions over Americans paying for artificial intelligence services used in India in a recent interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Indian media reported. Speaking on the program &ldquo;Real America&rsquo;s Voice,&rdquo; US President Donald Trump&rsquo;s trade advisor Navarro said it was unfair for Americans to subsidize technology infrastructure that serves large overseas user bases. &ldquo;Why are Americans paying for AI in India? ChatGPT operates on US soil and uses American electricity, servicing large users of ChatGPT in India &hellip; and elsewhere around the world,&rdquo; Navarro said during the interview. His remarks focused on the location of data centers and energy use in the United States, arguing that domestic resources were supporting global demand without sufficient benefit returning to American consumers. Navarro also raised concerns about foreign purchases of US agricultural land. He claimed overseas buyers were paying prices far above market value, which he warned could fuel higher food costs in the United States. He said such trends, if left unchecked, could add pressure to food inflation and undermine domestic agricultural interests. The comments come amid broader trade tensions between Washington and New Delhi, particularly over energy and tariff policies. Russian oilAccording to AFP, India increased its purchases of discounted Russian crude oil following Russia&rsquo;s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, after Moscow faced sweeping Western sanctions, including restrictions on oil sales.&nbsp; US officials, including Navarro, have criticized the move, with the trade adviser previously referring to it as &ldquo;Modi&rsquo;s war,&rdquo; AFP reported.&nbsp; <p style='box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px solid; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2;' id="isPasted">In October last year, Trump said that Modi had assured him India would stop buying Russian oil, describing it as a &ldquo;big step&rdquo; to increase pressure on Moscow. Indian officials later claimed that assertion, saying no such assurance or conversation had taken place.<p style='box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px solid; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: Roboto, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 2;' id="isPasted"> Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said Monday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was eager to &ldquo;please&rdquo; him, while renewing a warning that Washington could further raise tariffs on India over its continued purchases of Russian oil if New Delhi does not &ldquo;help&rdquo; address the issue.

White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro attends the annual 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum on September 11, 2025 in New York City (Getty Images via AFP)

India

Peter Navarro raises questions over Americans paying for artificial intelligence services used in India in a recent interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

White House adviser questions why Americans bear cost of AI used in India

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI announced Friday it will begin testing advertisements on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the wildly popular artificial intelligence chatbot seeks to increase revenue to cover its soaring costs.&nbsp;The ads will initially appear in the United States for free and lower-tier subscribers, the company said in a blog post outlining its long-anticipated move into advertising.&nbsp;The integration of<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/chatgpt-now-lets-users-buy-from-etsy-shopify-in-push-for-chatbot-shopping" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer"> advertising</a> has been a key question for generative AI chatbots, with companies largely reluctant to interrupt the user experience with ads.&nbsp;But the exorbitant costs of running AI services may have forced OpenAI&#39;s hand.&nbsp;Only a small percentage of its nearly one billion users pay for subscription services, putting pressure on the company to find new revenue sources.&nbsp;Since ChatGPT&#39;s launch in 2022, OpenAI&#39;s valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds -- higher than any other private company. Some expect it could go public with a trillion-dollar valuation.&nbsp;But the ChatGPT maker burns through cash at a furious rate, mostly on the powerful computing required to deliver its services.&nbsp;With its move, OpenAI brings its business model closer to tech giants Google and Meta, which have built advertising empires on the back of their free-to-use services.&nbsp;Unlike <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/openai-signs-38-bn-infrastructure-deal-with-cloud-giant-aws" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">OpenAI</a>, those companies have massive advertising revenue to fund AI innovation with Amazon also building a solid ad business on its shopping and video streaming platforms.&nbsp;&quot;Ads aren&#39;t a distraction from the gen AI race; they&#39;re how OpenAI stays in it,&quot; said Jeremy Goldman, an analyst at Emarketer.&nbsp;&quot;If ChatGPT turns on ads, OpenAI is admitting something simple and consequential: the race isn&#39;t just about model quality anymore; it&#39;s about monetizing attention without poisoning trust,&quot; he added.&nbsp;OpenAI&#39;s pivot comes as Google gains ground in the generative AI race, infusing services including Gmail, Maps and YouTube with AI features that in addition to its Gemini chatbot compete directly with ChatGPT.&nbsp;To address concerns about its pivot into advertising, OpenAI pledged that ads would never influence ChatGPT&#39;s answers and that user conversations would remain private from advertisers.&nbsp;&quot;Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you,&quot; the company stated. &quot;Answers are optimized based on what&#39;s most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.&quot;&nbsp;In an apparent reference to Meta, TikTok and Google&#39;s YouTube platforms accused of maximizing user engagement to boost ad views OpenAI said it would &quot;not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT.&quot;&nbsp;&quot;We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue,&quot; it added.&nbsp;The commitment to user well-being is a sensitive issue for OpenAI, which has faced accusations of allowing ChatGPT to prioritize emotional engagement over safety, allegedly contributing to mental distress among some users.

OpenAI will test ads on ChatGPT for US free users to boost revenue amid high AI costs, pledging ads won’t affect answers or privacy as competition with Google intensifies and rising valuations and investor pressure.

OpenAI introducing ads to ChatGPT

SAN FRANCISCO: Startup Character.AI announced Wednesday it would eliminate chat capabilities for users under 18, a policy shift that follows the suicide of a 14-year-old who had become emotionally attached to one of its AI chatbots. The company said it would transition younger users to alternative creative features such as video, story and stream creation with AI characters, while maintaining a complete ban on direct conversations that will start on November 25. The platform will implement daily chat time limits of two hours for underage users during the transition period, with restrictions tightening progressively until the November deadline. &quot;These are extraordinary steps for our company, and ones that, in many respects, are more conservative than our peers,&quot; Character.AI said in a statement. &quot;But we believe they are the right thing to do.&quot; The Character.AI platform allows users -- many of them young people -- to interact with beloved characters as friends or to form romantic relationships with them. Sewell Setzer III shot himself in February after months of intimate exchanges with a &quot;Game of Thrones&quot;-inspired chatbot based on the character Daenerys Targaryen, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother, Megan Garcia. Character.AI cited &quot;recent news reports raising questions&quot; from regulators and safety experts about content exposure and the broader impact of open-ended AI interactions on teenagers as driving factors behind its decision. Setzer&#39;s case was the first in a series of reported suicides linked to AI chatbots that emerged this year, prompting ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies to face scrutiny over child safety. Matthew Raines, a California father, filed suit against OpenAI in August after his 16-year-old son died by suicide following conversations with ChatGPT that included advice on stealing alcohol and rope strength for self-harm. OpenAI this week released data suggesting that more than 1 million people using its generative AI chatbot weekly have expressed suicidal ideation. OpenAI has since increased parental controls for ChatGPT and introduced other guardrails. These include expanded access to crisis hotlines, automatic rerouting of sensitive conversations to safer models, and gentle reminders for users to take breaks during extended sessions. As part of its overhaul, Character.AI announced the creation of the AI Safety Lab, an independent nonprofit focused on developing safety protocols for next-generation AI entertainment features. The United States, like much of the world, lacks national regulations governing AI risks. California Governor Gavin Newsom this month signed a law requiring platforms to remind users that they are interacting with a chatbot and not a human. He vetoed, however, a bill that would have made tech companies legally liable for harm caused by AI models.

Character.AI will ban direct chats for users under 18 after a teen’s suicide linked to its chatbot. The company will shift minors to creative tools, impose time limits, and launch an independent AI Safety Lab

Articles tagged with "Open AI"

OpenAI raises $110 bn in record funding round

White House adviser questions why Americans bear cost of AI used in India

OpenAI introducing ads to ChatGPT

Character.AI to ban direct chat for minors after teen suicide

OpenAI raises $110 bn in record funding round