OpenAI Raises $15 Billion at $1.25 Trillion Valuation, Half Its Original Target

OpenAI has not publicly confirmed the figures. The round has not formally closed and is expected to be completed within the next couple of weeks, according to the reports. Bloomberg News reported on November 6 that about $11 billion of the money had already come in at the same valuation.

The result is the clearest test so far of how much private money is still available to the largest AI developers as they commit to spending on chips, data centres and power. It arrives days before Anthropic, OpenAI's closest rival, lists on Nasdaq, so investors will soon be able to compare a private price with a public one for the two companies.

Even after being scaled back, the valuation is about 47% higher than the $852 billion OpenAI was valued at in March, when it raised $122 billion with Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank as anchor investors. CNBC described the $1.25 trillion figure as a pre-money valuation, while the March number was post-money, so the comparison is only approximate.

People familiar with the matter described the new money as an opportunistic raise to carry the company to an initial public offering expected in 2027, according to the reports. The capital is intended to help OpenAI meet its infrastructure commitments for computing capacity, data centres and chips.

Faber also reported that OpenAI has so far taken about $30 billion from Nvidia and about $65 billion from SoftBank. Those figures refer to funding to date. The reports did not give a full list of investors in the new round.

The company's finances show both fast growth and heavy spending. CNBC reported that revenue rose nearly 50% from the second quarter to the third, and The Information put third-quarter revenue at about $10 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported operating losses of about $10.9 billion for the same quarter.

Nvidia, one of OpenAI's biggest backers, is now run by an interim leadership team. Jensen Huang left as chief executive this week after admitting to an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a company implicated in smuggling Nvidia chips into China.

OpenAI's private round will be measured against Anthropic's listing. Anthropic plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, raising up to $64.4 billion, and is due to list under the ticker ANT as soon as November 19. Reports put the valuation implied by that range at between about $1.2 trillion and $1.4 trillion, so the developer of Claude could be valued close to OpenAI's new private price, or above it.

The next markers are Anthropic's pricing, expected midweek, and the formal close of OpenAI's round in the coming weeks, when the final amount and the list of investors may become clearer.