By Berber Jin and Jack Pitcher

OpenAI completed the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, raising $122 billion ahead of a blockbuster IPO expected by the end of the year.

The deal came with an additional perk: greater access to individual investors. As part of the financing, OpenAI raised more than $3 billion from wealthy investors through banks and said it would be included in several exchange-traded funds managed by ARK Invest, the investment firm led by technology bull Cathie Wood.

The deal shows how the ChatGPT-maker is diversifying its shareholder base ahead of its planned public listing, specifically among individual investors keen to gain exposure to some of the hottest names in the artificial-intelligence boom.

ARK's flagship $6 billion Innovation ETF will have a roughly 3% exposure to OpenAI following the investment, and is the first private company the fund will hold, a person familiar with the matter said. OpenAI shares are already a small part of mutual funds and ETFs run by T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.

Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank committed $110 billion to the funding round, while additional cash came from Silicon Valley and Wall Street investment firms.

The new funding puts OpenAI on strong financial footing, giving it a crucial cash cushion to continue spending aggressively on AI chips for its research and products. It is also a signal of the company's enduring appeal among top investors, even as rivals begin to close the gap in the AI race.

OpenAI is in the middle of a major strategy shift to concentrate its resources around building a new "superapp" tailored toward developers and business users. The company recently ditched its much-hyped Sora video app, and is looking at other areas to cut so it can focus its efforts on building so-called productivity tools, particularly coding assistants.

The company said it expects roughly half of its revenue to come from enterprises by the end of the year.

"AI is driving productivity gains, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding what people and organizations can build," OpenAI said. "This funding gives us the resources to continue to lead at the scale this moment demands."

Write to Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com and Jack Pitcher at jack.pitcher@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 31, 2026 16:38 ET (20:38 GMT)

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