OpenAI is reportedly negotiating a new funding round that could value the company at as much as $830 billion, placing it among the world’s largest tech giants. According to reports, the goal is to raise up to $100 billion by Q1 2026, with SoftBank already prepared to invest around $30 billion.
This aggressive capital expansion comes as OpenAI plans investments measured in trillions of dollars, alongside major cloud infrastructure and data center deals across Japan, Europe, and the United States. At the same time, the company has declared a kind of internal “code red” to respond to mounting competitive pressure — particularly from Google — and to justify its massive infrastructure spending.
However, the timing is delicate. Public AI stocks have been sliding, while warnings about a potential bubble and valuations far outpacing actual revenues are growing louder. The key question remains whether such extreme valuations can hold before the AI industry proves it can become sustainably profitable.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- Netflix executives sought to reassure employees amid reports of a potential deal involving Warner Bros. Discovery, emphasizing minimal business overlap and no plans to shut down studios.
- Google is shutting down its dark web monitoring feature, notifying users that it will stop scanning for exposed personal data on January 15.
- Merriam-Webster named “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, defining it as “low-quality digital content typically produced at scale using AI.”
- The U.S. government launched “Tech Force,” a new initiative to hire 1,000 young AI and software specialists into federal institutions to strengthen technical talent.
- Overview Energy raised $20 million to develop space-based solar power, using satellites to transmit energy to solar panels on Earth for continuous clean electricity generation.
AI Trending Tools:
- DeepSeek V3.2 – The latest powerful open-source release from DeepSeek.
- Mistral 3 – A new family of open-source models from Mistral.
- Amazon Nova – Four new models accompanied by services for training custom versions.
