Highlights for this morning: OpenAI seeks $50 billion, Blue Origin challenges Starlink

OpenAI is negotiating with sovereign funds in the Middle East on a new round of financing for $50 billion. Meta starts global monetization of Threads through advertising. These and other topics are covered in our review of key events for the morning of January 22.

OpenAI is in discussions with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East to raise investment in a new funding round of about $50 billion, CNBC has learned. The terms of the deal have not yet been fixed and may change. According to the channel, the company's CEO Sam Altman is now in the UAE and is involved in the negotiations. Closing of the round is expected in the first quarter.

The company, which launched ChatGPT, has already raised record amounts: last year, $40 billion in a round led by SoftBank with participation from Microsoft and other investors. OpenAI also completed a $6.6 billion share sale in October 2025, bringing the startup's valuation to $500 billion.

The US Supreme Court justices were skeptical of the Donald Trump administration's arguments in the case of firing Fed board member Lisa Cook, pointing to the risks to the independence of the central bank and the entire system of government appointments, Yahoo Finance writes. In the course of the hearing, the judges made it clear that they were inclined to protect the Federal Reserve from political pressure.

Trump decided to fire Cook in August 2025 after accusing her of mortgage fraud. She denies the charges and is challenging them in court.

Meta has announced that it will start global display advertising on its Threads microblogging service from next week. The launch will be gradual and may take several months. Previously, ads were tested only in the US and Japan. Analysts expect Threads to become an important source of revenue for the company, CNBC points out.

The social network was launched in July 2023, the number of its active users has already exceeded 400 million per month. According to TechCrunch, the service has overtaken X in the number of daily mobile users.

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has announced plans to deploy 5,408 satellites to create a TeraWave communications network aimed at corporate customers, data centers and government agencies, CNBC reports. The project brings Blue Origin into the highly competitive satellite internet market, which is dominated by SpaceX's Starlink, the channel notes.

Blue Origin's constellation deployment is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2027. The company said that the data transfer rate from satellites in low and medium Earth orbit will be up to 6 terabits per second.

- Japan's broad Topix index rose 1 percent, while the Nikkei 225 rose 2 percent.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index and mainland China's CSI 300 Index were little changed.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index added 1.1 percent and the Kosdaq added 1.8 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.75 percent.

- Futures on the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.1 percent, while Nasdaq 100 exchange-traded contracts were up 0.2 percent.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor