OpenAI Eyes $50 Billion Mega-Round from Middle Eastern Sovereign Funds

OpenAI is reportedly in advanced talks to secure a staggering $50 billion funding round from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East.

Why This Deal Matters

This isn't just another venture round—it's a tectonic shift. A $50 billion injection would dwarf previous AI funding records, signaling that nation-states, not just Silicon Valley VCs, are placing their definitive bets on artificial general intelligence. The move would provide OpenAI with a war chest to accelerate infrastructure, research, and global scaling at an unprecedented pace.

The Sovereign Wealth Play

Middle Eastern funds like Saudi Arabia's PIF and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala have been aggressively diversifying from oil into tech supremacy. This potential deal represents the ultimate convergence of petrodollars and compute. It gives these funds a commanding stake in the frontrunner of the AI race, while OpenAI gets capital that's patient, deep, and geopolitically savvy.

Market Implications

Such a massive, concentrated investment could further solidify OpenAI's market dominance, raising the competitive bar to stratospheric levels for rivals. It also hints at future strategic alignments—think data center partnerships in the Gulf or tailored AI deployments for national initiatives. For the broader ecosystem, it validates AI as the single most critical asset class for the next decade.

One cynical take? After burning through billions with little to show but hype cycles, the crypto crowd must be watching this real tech investment—you know, the kind that builds actual world-changing infrastructure—with a serious case of FOMO.

Altman travels to UAE as funding round takes shape

Sam Altman, who leads OpenAI as its chief executive, traveled to the United Arab Emirates to take part in the investment conversations, the source confirmed. The company expects to wrap up this funding round during the first three months of the year.

OpenAI set off the current wave of interest in artificial intelligence when it released ChatGPT, its conversational AI tool, back in 2022. Since that launch, the company has grown into one of the world’s most rapidly expanding commercial operations. It has pulled in many billions of dollars from backers while working to build larger systems, create improved technology, and add new capabilities.

The company completed a $40 billion investment round last year with SoftBank taking the lead role. That deal set a record as the biggest private technology funding ever documented. Microsoft, which has been a central investor for years, joined that round along with Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive.

OpenAI also finished selling $6.6 billion worth of shares this past October. That transaction pushed the company’s total value to $500 billion.

NVIDIA partnership brings major infrastructure investment

The firm recently made another major announcement involving NVIDIA. The two companies said they plan to work together in what they’re calling a landmark arrangement. Under this deal, Nvidia will provide at least 10 gigawatts of its computing systems for OpenAI’s upcoming AI infrastructure. OpenAI will use these systems to train and operate its next wave of models as it works toward what it calls superintelligence. To make this happen, including building data centers and securing power capacity, NVIDIA plans to put up to $100 billion into OpenAI as the new systems get installed. The first portion of this setup should start running in the second half of 2026 using NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform.

“NVIDIA and OpenAI have pushed each other for a decade, from the first DGX supercomputer to the breakthrough of ChatGPT,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “This investment and infrastructure partnership mark the next leap forward — deploying 10 gigawatts to power the next era of intelligence.”

“Everything starts with compute,” said Sam Altman. “Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilize what we’re building with NVIDIA to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”

OpenAI will treat NVIDIA as its main partner for computing and networking as it grows what it calls its AI factory. The two companies will coordinate their plans so OpenAI’s model and infrastructure software work well with NVIDIA’s hardware and software.

OpenAI now counts more than 700 million people using its services each week. The company has also seen strong uptake from large corporations, smaller companies and people who build software. This new partnership with NVIDIA should help OpenAI MOVE forward with its stated goal of building artificial general intelligence that helps everyone.

NVIDIA and OpenAI said they expect to nail down the remaining details of this new phase of their partnership within the next few weeks.

While OpenAI conducts these major negotiations, other American AI companies are putting down roots in the Middle East right now. Verkada, which makes AI-powered security technology for physical spaces, said it’s expanding into the region by opening an office in Dubai and hiring Fred Crehan to run Middle East operations.

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