🧠 OpenAI Breaks AI Funding History 🧠
Week of April 7th, 2025
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AI News Roundup
Guest Article by AJ Green
OpenAI Breaks AI Funding History
OpenAI just closed a record-breaking $40 billion funding round, led by SoftBank, valuing the company at $300 billion—the largest private raise in tech history. At the same time, ChatGPT subscriptions surged 30%, pushing OpenAI's annualized revenue toward $5 billion and setting the stage for a projected $29.4B by 2026. This comes on the heels of the fastest AI adoption ever recorded: 1 million users joined ChatGPT in 1 hour after launching native image generation in GPT-4o, which handled 700 million requests in its first week.
The Details
SoftBank will invest an initial $7.5B, followed by another $22.5B later this year with other investors including Magnetar Capital, Coatue, Founders Fund, and Altimeter Capital Management.
Weekly active users now stand at 500 million, making ChatGPT one of the most widely used platforms globally
The GPT-4o native image generation update demonstrated OpenAI's unmatched virality potential, generating 1 million signups in a single hour (which is quite literally melting their GPUs).
OpenAI is launching it's first open-weights model since GPT-2 signaling a calculated shift in its relationship with the broader AI ecosystem.
Why it matters
OpenAI’s $40 billion raise isn’t just historic—it’s catalytic. With $18B going into the Stargate project and 1M+ users flooding in within an hour of launching GPT-4o’s image generation, OpenAI isn’t scaling—it’s setting the pace for the entire AI economy. This level of adoption and capital investment signals something deeper: AI is no longer a vertical—it’s becoming the default infrastructure layer for institutions, governments, and global innovation.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro tops AI leaderboard
While the AI world was busy turning GPT-4o into a Studio Ghibli character generator, Google quietly dropped Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental —and it might be the most underrated release of the year. Skipping the viral flair, Google focused on impact: reasoning-first architecture, massive context windows, and serious enterprise capabilities.
The Details
Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental has claimed the #1 spot on the LMArena leaderboard, beating both GPT-4.5 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
2.5 Pro achieves insanely impressive scores on coding benchmarks, with 63.8% on SWE-Bench Verified and 74% on Aider Polyglot.
Currently offering a 1 million token context window, with plans to increase to 2 million tokens, enabling processing of entire code repositories and massive datasets.
Gemini scored 130 on Mensa Norway’s abstract reasoning test, far surpassing the average human IQ.
The model is available now in Google AI Studio and the Gemini app for Advanced subscribers, with API pricing details expected soon.
Why it matters
Gemini 2.5 Pro isn’t here to dazzle you with parlor tricks—it’s here to think. With a foundation built on reasoning, multimodal fluency, and long-context memory, this model sets a new bar for what applied AI can do in technical, scientific, and enterprise domains. However, with AI advancements rapidly progressing and models like GPT-5 on the horizon, Gemini 2.5's current top ranking may face challenges in the near future.
Musk finalizes $113B xAI-X merger
Elon Musk has orchestrated a major merger between his artificial intelligence company, xAI, and his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), forming a new entity: xAI Holdings. This all-stock deal, valued at over $100 billion, marks a pivotal step in Musk’s mission to fuse social data and advanced AI under a single strategic vision.
The Details
The merger consolidates data, compute, distribution, and teams, with Grok’s integration into X’s 600-million-user platform now official—essentially creating a massive, real-time AI training loop.
As xAI Holdings, the combined company is positioning itself to rival OpenAI, Google, and other incumbents by controlling the full AI stack—model, data, compute, and distribution.
xAI is valued at $80B and X at $33B, plus $12B in debt, setting X's enterprise value at $45B.
Why it matters
With the formation of xAI Holdings, Elon Musk isn’t just merging companies—he’s vertically integrating the AI pipeline, from model development to mass distribution. This gives xAI a unique edge: real-time data feedback, user engagement, and model deployment all under one roof. But while the strategy is bold, questions around transparency, governance, and monetization could shadow its execution—and X still has a long road to reclaim mainstream trust.
Partner Spotlight
The next evolution in AI is here. Agentic AI is a form of artificial intelligence designed to function autonomously. Agentic AI can make decisions, perform tasks and adapt to its environment without constant human intervention to automate a broader range of tasks with minimal supervision.
Read Snowflake’s “A Practical Guide to AI Agents” report to explore:
How AI agents differ from other AI models
Key benefits, use cases and real-world success stories
Security, compliance and ethical considerations
A roadmap for implementing agentic AI in your organization
Events Spotlight
🏛️ DC Chapter Update
If you haven't heard, the DC Tech scene is exploding right now — and the GenAI Collective is helping lead the charge!
The DC chapter of the GenAI Collective — led by the amazing Catherine McMillan — was featured in Business Insider as part of a story on how Washington is becoming a surprising hub for innovation, AI, and early-stage startups.
📈 From government agencies to VCs opening offices in the DMV, the momentum is real. Catherine is at the forefront, building community, hosting packed GenAI events, and spotlighting the creative energy emerging in the nation's capital.
With 700+ members and growing, our DC chapter is helping founders, engineers, policymakers, and operators connect on generative AI and impact.
💬 As Catherine put it:
“We have a Big Tech presence, but we also have an ecosystem in its own right.”
The future of AI isn’t confined to certain cities — it’s everywhere people are building with purpose.
Read the full article here and come join us as we help shape the future of AI! 🚀
Our Premier Partners
Premier Partners are values-aligned leaders who invest in the future of AI by supporting the world’s most vibrant grassroots community. We thank them immensely for their ongoing support! 😄
About AJ Green
AJ is the Founder & CEO of AI Advantage Agency, WCYP Chairman, and Chapter Lead for GenAI Collective Portland. Former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is a builder and superconnector on a mission to make AI the great equalizer—helping startups scale and turning disruption into opportunity.
About Eric Fett
Eric leads the development of the newsletter and online presence. He is currently an investor at NGP Capital where he focuses on Series A/B investments across enterprise AI, cyber, and industrial tech. He’s passionate about working with early-stage visionaries on their quest to create a better future. When not working, you can find him on a soccer field or at a sushi bar! 🍣