On May 11th local time, OpenAI announced the establishment of a new company called 'OpenAI Deployment Company,' with an initial investment exceeding $4 billion (approximately 27.2 billion yuan), aiming to help enterprises build and deploy AI. Simultaneously, OpenAI will also acquire the AI consulting firm Toromo to rapidly expand the scale of the deployment company.
The deployment company is controlled by OpenAI and brings together 19 investment, consulting institutions, and system integrators. OpenAI stated that this is a long-term collaborative project led by TPG, with Advent International, Bain Capital, and Brookfield serving as joint lead founding partners. Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, and others are also founding partners. Among them, Brookfield announced on May 11th that it had agreed to invest $500 million in OpenAI Deployment Company.
According to the introduction, the AI consulting company Toromo, which OpenAI plans to acquire, will bring about 150 AI engineers and 'deployment experts' to the deployment company. Toromo was founded in 2023 and formed an alliance with OpenAI, with clients including Mattel, Red Bull, Tesco, and Virgin Atlantic.
OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser believes that AI is becoming increasingly capable of performing tasks within organizations, but the current challenge is how to help enterprises integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that support their businesses. Therefore, the purpose of the deployment company is to help organizations bridge this gap, turning AI capabilities into real operational impact.
OpenAI stated that over the past few years, over 1 million enterprises have adopted OpenAI products and APIs. The next stage of competition will depend on the efficiency of AI deployment in actual business scenarios and the support capabilities of OpenAI and its ecosystem partners.
OpenAI is increasing its investment in computing power and the AI field. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said on May 5th local time that the company is expected to invest $50 billion in computing power this year. Brockman noted that as OpenAI develops more advanced AI models and provides services to a broader user base, its computing costs have surged from about $30 million in 2017 to hundreds of billions of dollars this year. Informed sources stated in February this year that OpenAI aims to achieve a total computing expenditure of around $600 billion by 2030.
At the end of March, OpenAI announced the completion of $122 billion in financing, the largest single financing round in Silicon Valley corporate history, with a post-investment valuation of $852 billion. This round was led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, with Microsoft continuing its participation. SoftBank co-led the round with a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Additionally, institutions such as ARK Invest managed by Cathie Wood, Blackstone, Sequoia, Temasek, and Thrive Capital widely participated.
Previously, OpenAI had revealed that some strategic investors had committed $110 billion as the basis for this financing round, including $50 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $30 billion from SoftBank.
OpenAI is also intensifying the research and development of large models. At the end of March, OpenAI announced it would cease using its video generation tool Sora. It is reported that OpenAI will refocus team efforts on developing advanced robotics and AI models capable of interacting with the physical world. On April 14th, OpenAI announced allowing select users access to a new model more adept at discovering software security vulnerabilities, with fewer restrictions on user probing methods for such tasks. On April 20th, reports indicated that OpenAI is set to release a completely new image model in the coming weeks, with significantly enhanced capabilities in generating complex images and charts.
Separately, according to previous remarks by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, OpenAI may go public in 2027. Reports suggest that OpenAI's IPO (Initial Public Offering) valuation could be as high as approximately $1 trillion, with a potential filing for listing with regulators as early as the second half of 2026.
This article is from 'Jiemian News,' reporter: Hou Ruining
