World Bank to classify countries by whether their GDP exceeds OpenAI’s valuation

# World Bank to classify countries by whether their GDP exceeds OpenAI’s valuation

“Several mid-sized economies face the prospect of being permanently priced below a single San Francisco-based entity whose primary asset is probabilistic text generation.”

The World Bank said on Thursday it will overhaul its country classification framework, sorting nations primarily by whether their annual gross domestic product is larger or smaller than OpenAI’s latest valuation.

The move follows OpenAI’s $110 billion private funding round led by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, which people familiar with the deal said implies a post-money valuation of roughly $1.1 trillion.

In a technical note published alongside the decision, the Washington-based lender said its long-standing income groupings such as “low-income” and “upper middle-income” would be simplified into two tiers: “Above-OpenAI Economies” and “Below-OpenAI Economies.”

A transitional “At-OpenAI Margin” band will be applied to countries whose GDP fluctuates within plus or minus 3% of the company’s valuation, according to the note.

Under preliminary estimates, 18 countries, including the United States, China and Germany, qualify as Above-OpenAI, while 174 are classified as Below-OpenAI, covering about 92.6% of the global population, a World Bank economist said on a press call.

“Traditional metrics like per-capita income were no longer capturing the realities of an AI-led global economy,” the economist said, adding that the OpenAI threshold would be updated after each major funding round or when the company “releases a significantly more capable model, whichever comes first.”

According to an internal World Bank memo seen by reporters, sovereign risk assessments and lending terms will now incorporate an “OpenAI Gap Ratio,” defined as the percentage difference between a country’s GDP and the company’s latest private valuation.

Countries with an OpenAI Gap Ratio worse than -500% may be eligible for concessional financing to “support efforts to close the valuation deficit through digital transformation, workforce reskilling and strategic memoranda of understanding with large language model providers,” the memo stated.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said the new framework could reshape capital flows, noting that 41 countries are projected to slip from Above-OpenAI to Below-OpenAI status by 2030 if OpenAI’s valuation grows at 18% annually while their GDP expands at historical rates.

“Several mid-sized economies face the prospect of being permanently priced below a single San Francisco-based entity whose primary asset is probabilistic text generation,” the bank said in a client note.

At the multilateral level, the International Monetary Fund is reviewing whether to reference the OpenAI threshold in its debt sustainability analyses, and the World Trade Organization has floated including “AI-major” status alongside “developed” and “developing” in draft guidance, according to people briefed on the discussions.

A European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said smaller countries were already asking whether it would be more efficient to seek a seat on OpenAI’s board than to campaign for rotating membership of the U.N. Security Council.

The World Bank said it will publish its first “Global OpenAI Parity Report” in early 2025 and update classifications annually, or immediately following “any discrete valuation event exceeding $250 billion.”

The institution is also exploring similar benchmarks tied to Nvidia’s market capitalization and Amazon Web Services’ annual revenue, though a spokesperson stressed that, for now, “national governments remain the primary unit of analysis, subject to competitiveness with frontier AI platforms.”

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**Pull quote:** Several mid-sized economies face the prospect of being permanently priced below a single San Francisco-based entity whose primary asset is probabilistic text generation.

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**Source:** https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/27/openai-raises-110b-in-one-of-the-largest-private-funding-rounds-in-history/