Amid Ghibli image hype, OpenAI secures $40bn funding led by SoftBank, doubling valuation to $300bn—All you need to know

Sam Altman, founder-CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, on April 1 announced that the platform saw a record 1 million users in an hour — all thanks to its Ghibli-style image generation feature. Now, thanks to the user engagement, the artificial intelligence (AI) tech company has said that it has secured $40 billion from investors, in a funding round led by Softbank Group, to double valuation to $300 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.

“Hundreds of millions people use ChatGPT each week. This investment helps us push the frontier and make AI more useful in everyday life,” Sam Altman said in a statement on March 31.