The money first: $122 billion closed at an $852 billion valuation — its largest round ever. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank anchored it at $50 billion, $30 billion, and $30 billion, respectively. For the first time, retail investors got in via bank channels, contributing $3 billion, with OpenAI also set to appear in several ARK Invest ETFs. The company says it's doing $2 billion in revenue per month, with 900 million weekly active users and 50 million subscribers.
Then the weirder move: OpenAI acquired TBPN, a daily live tech talk show, in its first-ever media acquisition. The FT put the price in the "low hundreds of millions" or a show that's barely a year old. Sam Altman now has his own media property, just like Elon has X.
More insights
All insights
Half the Market Is on Strike
September's IPO delays, record private rounds, and a secondary market where only 1 in 5 names has buyers and sellers. Our Q3 data, explained.
Read
Is the market immune to good news?
Nvidia posted its best quarter ever, yet AI sentiment barely moved. What August's LBX25 Index and private-market data say about where AI risk sits.
Read
If the model layer is commoditizing, why do the two frontier labs post the fastest revenue ramps in tech history?
July in private markets: open-weight models closed in, chips fell ~20%, yet Anthropic and OpenAI kept ramping. Here's where activity moved.
Read