TMTPost --  OpenAI announced Wednesday it has closed an eye-catching funding round, doubling valuation of the startup behind ChatGPT in less than a year.

OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in new funding at a $157 billion post-money valuation, according to a company blog Wednesday. “The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems,” the blog said.

The funding round made OpenAI one of the top three most valued startups across the world, along with SpaceX and ByteDance. The valuation is significantly higher than the $860 billion valuation from the company’s tender offer in February.

OpenAI said in the blog it aims to make advanced intelligence a widely accessible resource and the new funding is made to accelerate progress on its mission. Every week, over 250 million people around the world use ChatGPT to enhance their work, creativity, and learning, the company said. There are also 11 million ChatGPT Plus subscribers and 1 million paying business users on ChatGPT, CNBC quoted a person close to the company

“AI is already personalizing learning, accelerating healthcare breakthroughs, and driving productivity,” OpenAI Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Sarah Friar said in the statement. “And this is just the start.”

OpenAI didn’t disclose which investors joined in the latest funding round. Multiple media outlets reported existing investors and newcomer like SoftBank participated in.

The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm founded by Josh Kushner, who is close with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The firm put in $1.3 billion, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft Corp., OpenAI’s largest backer, invest about $750 million, on top of the $13 billion it had already invested in the startup, the report cited a person familiar with the matter. It is reported that other investors included Khosla Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Nvidia Corp., the leading AI chipmaker, investing firm Tiger Global Management, which put in $350 million, and Altimeter Capital, which invested at least $250 million. The report said Global backers participating in the round included SoftBank Group Corp. and the new Abu Dhabi-based tech investment firm MGX, adding that SoftBank poured $500 million into the funding round.

Nvidia put in about $100 million in the funding round, the Wall Street Journal reported. It said that star stock-picker Cathie Wood’s $60 billion-asset Ark Investment Management and Altimeter Capital, a leading technology-focused investment firm, are each putting in about $250 million.

It is reported that OpenAI told investors in the new round that it doesn’t want them to put money into its biggest private competitors, including Anthropic, which was founded by several ex-OpenAI employees; Safe Superintelligence, which was co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever; and xAI, which was created by Elon Musk, an OpenAI cofounder and its first major source of funding. However, some of the reported backers of the latest funding round did bet on OpenAI’s rivals. Ark has invested in several other big-name startups like Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX, FigureAI, and Databricks. Fidelity recently took part in a funding round for xAI.

Apple Inc. seems not join in OpenAI’s funding.

The Wall Street Journal reported late August that OpenAI is in discussion about a new funding round that could see it valued at more than $100 billion. A Bloomberg report then said that Nvidia has discussed joining the funding round, echoing the Wall Street Journal that Apple and Microsoft have also been in talks about participating in the financing. Apple recently fell out of the talks to join the round, which is slated to close next week, the Wall Street Journal reported last weekend, citing a knowledgeable person. Apple didn’t join in the funding, Axios said a source confirmed, though it had been reportedly in talks in invest.