Andrew here. It’s a huge morning of news: We have an exclusive on OpenAI’s latest fund-raising round, with some new boldfaced investor names and one big check; we sort through the latest tariff news and what comes next; we also dive into Figma’s I.P.O. for the ages, and more.
And stay tuned for the jobs numbers, which come out shortly.
OpenAI’s latest mega-round
While Wall Street has been focused on how tech giants are spending on artificial intelligence, the most prominent name in the field, OpenAI, has been racking up big money as well.
DealBook is first to report on the huge numbers, and what the round means for the company behind ChatGPT in the increasingly heated A.I. race.
OpenAI has raised $8.3 billion at a $300 billion valuation, months ahead of schedule, as part of its plan to secure $40 billion in funding this year, DealBook has learned. Back in March, OpenAI announced its ambitious funding plans, with SoftBank committing to provide $30 billion by year-end.
The start-up raised $2.5 billion from venture capital firms that same month, with plans to raise an additional $7.5 billion by the end of the year. Instead, the fund-raising came much sooner — and over target.
A wave of new investors participated in the round, including the private equity giants Blackstone and TPG, and the mutual fund manager T. Rowe Price. Other participants include Fidelity Management, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Tiger Global and Thrive Capital.
Blackstone and TPG aren’t major investors in A.I. model makers. But they were seen by OpenAI as particularly valuable, since they can promote the adoption of ChatGPT among their portfolio companies, including those in health care, financial services and industrials.
The round was five times oversubscribed — and left some early investors in OpenAI frustrated by the smaller allocations they got as the company prioritized bringing on new strategic backers.
The lead investor was Dragoneer Investment Group, which committed $2.8 billion, an astonishing check from a single venture capital firm that may be one of the largest ever written.
The investment casts a spotlight on Dragoneer, which made successful early bets on companies like Airbnb, Spotify and Uber but has largely stayed behind the scenes in Silicon Valley. Marc Stad, Dragoneer’s founder, is now taking a very public claim on what many in Silicon Valley see as the defining tech platform of the next decade. The investment represents about 10 percent of the firm’s funds.
OpenAI’s business continues to surge. DealBook hears that the company’s annual recurring revenue has soared to $13 billion, up from $10 billion in June — and is projected to surpass $20 billion by the end of the year.
The number of business users who pay for ChatGPT has reached five million, up from three million just a few months ago. (The Information previously reported on some of the growth numbers.)
The new funding round comes amid OpenAI’s delicate negotiations with Microsoft. Remember that OpenAI is seeking to become a for-profit company, a plan that requires sign-off by Microsoft, its biggest investor and business partner.
The stakes are big: A positive outcome could help shape OpenAI’s path toward an eventual I.P.O.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Investors eye a pivotal jobs report on Friday. Economists forecast that employers added 115,000 jobs last month, according to FactSet, down from 147,000 in June. (The data is set for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.) A hot number could reinforce the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged. President Trump on Friday stepped up the pressure on Jay Powell, demanding the Fed chair lower rates now, saying that if he continued to refuse, “THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”
Ray Dalio has reportedly cut all ties with Bridgewater Associates. The billionaire sold his final stake in the hedge fund he founded 50 years ago and will leave the board, The Wall Street Journal reported, completing a decadelong leadership transition that has fascinated Wall Street. Bridgewater also sold a multibillion-dollar stake to Brunei’s sovereign wealth fund, as the firm reconfigures itself for the post-Dalio era.
President Trump’s political war chest swells. MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, has raised about $200 million, a startling sum for a president in his final term. Donors include Jeffrey Yass, a major investor in TikTok; the Silicon Valley venture capitalists Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen; and Elon Musk, who also gave $10 million to Congressional Republicans despite saying he had “done enough” political spending.
Trade blitz
For weeks, global investors seemed to shake off President Trump’s tariff threats, with markets setting record after record.
That rally looks to be in jeopardy on Friday after the White House announced that steep levies would be imposed on more than 60 countries on Aug. 7. But that one-week delay suggests there’s a bit more time for trading partners to reach a deal.
The latest: Stocks in Asia and Europe were broadly lower, while S&P 500 futures are also in the red. Shares in the European drugmakers Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and AstraZeneca also fell after the White House sent letters to 17 global pharma giants demanding they slash the prices they charge Medicaid.
The proposed tariffs go up to 50 percent, a level that could ding growth, raise inflation and scramble global supply chains. Companies like Adidas, Ford and Procter & Gamble warned that levies would hit profits and, in some cases, lead to higher prices for consumers. Tariffs are “inherently inflationary,” Jon Moeller, P.&G.’s C.E.O., told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday.
Economists put the overall tariff rate on U.S. imports at around 15 percent. That’s up from roughly 2 percent at the start of the year and the highest level since the 1930s.
But there have been some last-minute surprises:
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Mexico, America’s largest trading partner, won a 90-day reprieve.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that he was “confident” negotiators could reach a similar extension with China.
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Canada is now subject to a 35 percent levy on goods, up from 25 percent, as tensions between Ottawa and Washington worsen.
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Switzerland, which runs a large trade surplus with the U.S. via exports of pharmaceuticals, coffee capsules and more, faces a 39 percent tariff rate. Shares in Watches of Switzerland, a retailer of Rolex and other Swiss timepieces, fell sharply in London trading.
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There are some overall exemptions on tariffs, including for goods already in transit.
Here’s a country-by-country tariff tracker.
It may take a while for households to feel the effect of the levies. “These taxes do not show up in consumer baskets with full force until January next year,” Paul Donovan, the chief economist for UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a research note on Friday.
That lag could scramble the Fed’s interest-rate policy. The central bank is wary of lowering borrowing costs if higher inflation is looming.
Figma’s heady debut, by the numbers
What a difference three years makes.
Figma closed its first day of trading on Thursday with a market capitalization of nearly $68 billion, more than triple what it would have gotten in a failed sale to Adobe announced in 2022. That jump in value is one for the ages — and gives Figma more firepower to strike its own takeovers.
The company’s stock soared 250 percent on Thursday, closing at $115.50. It priced its I.P.O. at $33 a share — an eye-watering “pop,” Wall Street lingo for how much a stock jumps on its first day of trading.
Figma’s pop is the biggest for a billion-dollar I.P.O. in at least 30 years, according to Renaissance Capital. Only two other offerings that raised at least $500 million broke 150 percent: Circle, the stablecoin issuer that went public in June (168 percent), and Palm, the onetime maker of personal digital assistants, at the height of the dot-com boom in 2000 (150 percent).
Worth noting: Underwriters try to aim for a pop in the midteens, by offering enough of a discount to persuade potential investors to buy into an I.P.O. while also creating robust demand for the stock once it begins trading.
But companies, and some prominent venture capitalists, generally don’t like huge pops, because they mean underwriters probably could have priced the I.P.O. higher. Consider: At the offering price of $33, Figma and some shareholders raised $1.2 billion for the shares they sold; at $115.50, they would have gotten nearly $4.3 billion.
What’s next for Figma: major deals of its own. Dylan Field, the company’s co-founder and C.E.O., told DealBook that he planned to invest heavily in technology like artificial intelligence. Having a publicly traded stock to help finance those acquisitions could help.
“Investors know that we plan to take big swings,” Field said.
Chart of the day
In January, the unexpected rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot that was said to have been developed far more cheaply than U.S. rivals, sent a jolt through the markets. Shares in several U.S. tech giants tanked, dragging down the S&P 500.
Since then, many of those companies have increased their artificial intelligence spending — and some of their stocks have rebounded or even exceeded earlier levels. Others have not, however, suggesting that investors are picking only a few winners in the expensive A.I. race.
Talking A.I. with the C.E.O. of Cengage
Every week, we’re asking a C.E.O. how he or she uses generative artificial intelligence. Michael Hansen, who leads the education company Cengage Group, says he asks his direct reports to use A.I. as a starting point for answering questions. His responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
How do you use A.I. personally?
I’ve made it a habit to start any interaction I have with my team by first generating the answer through ChatGPT or another generative A.I. engine. We generate the first draft of earnings call comments through ChatGPT, the same for competitive analysis. It’s become very much part of the muscle memory of the organization: People will typically automatically come and say, here’s what ChatGPT generated, let’s discuss it as a baseline.
What direction have you given your team on how to use A.I.?
I have been through a number of new technologies. I’ve never seen the speed with which this is being deployed. And that is both, I think, a call for excitement and for caution.
Internally, my biggest “aha” moment was on the customer side. We deal with tens of thousands of faculty, and now we can direct the sales force in a much more efficient way. How much have they taught with the previous system? How willing are they to switch? All of the data resides in our C.R.M. [customer relationship management] system, and the generative A.I. can pinpoint us to, “This person is ready to talk about this, and you can talk to her after her office hours on Thursday.”
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Goldman Sachs is said to be close to investing in Froneri, the ice cream company that owns the Häagen-Dazs brand in the U.S., at a valuation of about 15 billion euros ($17 billion). (FT)
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Starbucks has reportedly zeroed in on a dozen potential investors for its China business, including Carlyle Group, Primavera Capital and Tencent. (Bloomberg)
Technology and artificial intelligence
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Palantir landed a contract with the Pentagon that could be worth up to $10 billion, one of the department’s largest-ever contracts. (WaPo)
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“Google loses U.S. appeal over app store reforms in Epic Games case” (Reuters)
Best of the rest
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Why America’s condo market is faltering — and why sale prices could be under pressure for a while. (WSJ)
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Michael Kassan and United Talent Agency have settled the terms of his departure from the entertainment giant, seemingly ending a feud that riveted Hollywood. (The Hollywood Reporter)
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Danielle Kaye is a Times reporter, covering business and policy for the DealBook newsletter.
The post Exclusive: OpenAI Secures Another Giant Funding Deal appeared first on New York Times.
