San Francisco: OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, in what would rank among the largest private raises in history.
The discussions are still early and could change, according to people familiar with the matter, and the demand for the round is being led by investors, one of the people said. OpenAI declined to comment.
The company is seeking a valuation of around $1.4 trillion, not including the money raised — a figure that could vault it back above the most recent private-market valuation of its longtime rival Anthropic. Bloomberg had previously reported that OpenAI was considering a new round at a $1.2 trillion valuation.
The new fundraising, if it goes through, would serve as a bridge round to the company's anticipated public market debut, according to Bloomberg, with investors eager to pour more funds into the ChatGPT maker ahead of that listing.
OpenAI most recently raised $122 billion in March at a valuation of $852 billion, a round that was supposed to be its last private raise before an IPO that had been expected to take place this year. But CEO Sam Altman has now ruled out a public debut in 2026, saying the company wants to prioritise AI safety first.
"I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade," Altman recently told Fortune, in response to warnings from safety researchers about AI posing an existential risk to humanity. Altman has separately called this an "ill-advised moment" for an IPO.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential paperwork to go public, with Anthropic expected to hold its listing as soon as this fall. The two companies are locked in a heated battle to sign up business customers and bolster revenue ahead of their Wall Street debuts.
OpenAI has also faced mounting scrutiny over the potential for AI to cause catastrophic harm, including through cybersecurity breaches, and its technology has been involved in security incidents including the targeting of Australian government websites. The company said this week it would not release its latest model, GPT-6.1 Astra, because the system did not meet its internal safety standards. Altman has also endorsed a plan by Anthropic's Dario Amodei to slow down development of the most cutting-edge AI models and bring on independent evaluators to safeguard the technology.
While Anthropic momentarily outpaced OpenAI at the start of the year, OpenAI's recent strategic refocus on areas such as coding has fuelled a 70% jump in run-rate revenue since July, reaching $40 billion in August, according to Bloomberg. At its developer event on Tuesday, OpenAI unveiled a new always-on AI agent called Dots, positioned to compete with products such as Muse from Meta Platforms, and debuted a new high-end $500 subscription tier with higher usage limits and faster processing speeds.
Sources: TechCrunch (citing Bloomberg); The Economic Times
The discussions are still early and could change, according to people familiar with the matter, and the demand for the round is being led by investors, one of the people said. OpenAI declined to comment.
The company is seeking a valuation of around $1.4 trillion, not including the money raised — a figure that could vault it back above the most recent private-market valuation of its longtime rival Anthropic. Bloomberg had previously reported that OpenAI was considering a new round at a $1.2 trillion valuation.
The new fundraising, if it goes through, would serve as a bridge round to the company's anticipated public market debut, according to Bloomberg, with investors eager to pour more funds into the ChatGPT maker ahead of that listing.
OpenAI most recently raised $122 billion in March at a valuation of $852 billion, a round that was supposed to be its last private raise before an IPO that had been expected to take place this year. But CEO Sam Altman has now ruled out a public debut in 2026, saying the company wants to prioritise AI safety first.
"I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade," Altman recently told Fortune, in response to warnings from safety researchers about AI posing an existential risk to humanity. Altman has separately called this an "ill-advised moment" for an IPO.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential paperwork to go public, with Anthropic expected to hold its listing as soon as this fall. The two companies are locked in a heated battle to sign up business customers and bolster revenue ahead of their Wall Street debuts.
OpenAI has also faced mounting scrutiny over the potential for AI to cause catastrophic harm, including through cybersecurity breaches, and its technology has been involved in security incidents including the targeting of Australian government websites. The company said this week it would not release its latest model, GPT-6.1 Astra, because the system did not meet its internal safety standards. Altman has also endorsed a plan by Anthropic's Dario Amodei to slow down development of the most cutting-edge AI models and bring on independent evaluators to safeguard the technology.
While Anthropic momentarily outpaced OpenAI at the start of the year, OpenAI's recent strategic refocus on areas such as coding has fuelled a 70% jump in run-rate revenue since July, reaching $40 billion in August, according to Bloomberg. At its developer event on Tuesday, OpenAI unveiled a new always-on AI agent called Dots, positioned to compete with products such as Muse from Meta Platforms, and debuted a new high-end $500 subscription tier with higher usage limits and faster processing speeds.
Sources: TechCrunch (citing Bloomberg); The Economic Times
