OpenAI lève 122 milliards de dollars – 02/04

OpenAI has just closed a record-breaking $122 billion funding round, pushing its valuation to $852 billion ahead of a potential public listing. But beneath the headline numbers, the conversation around the company has shifted dramatically. The panel of analysts on Tech&Co described a company that is burning through cash at an alarming rate—roughly $1 billion per month—while facing mounting competitive pressure from all sides. The era of constant product launches and marketing blitzes appears to be over, replaced by a more sober reassessment of fundamentals.

The cooling of OpenAI’s momentum

The panel pointed to several warning signals that suggest OpenAI is no longer the undisputed leader it once was. The launch of GPT-5 last summer received a lukewarm reception, while Google’s Gemini Mini 3, released in November, generated genuine enthusiasm. More tellingly, Anthropic has doubled its revenue since January and is now growing faster than OpenAI in absolute terms. The company’s video generation tool Sora, which cost roughly $1 per query, has been deprioritized—partly because of its prohibitive cost, partly because user engagement was driven more by novelty than sustained utility. Other side projects, including an e-commerce instant checkout system, have also been shelved.