OpenAI eyes $30B at $1.4T valuation as bridge financing while IPO waits: Report

OpenAI is reportedly back in the market, this time asking for at least $30 billion at a pre-money valuation of around $1.4 trillion. The talks are early, the terms can still move, and Bloomberg says the round would act as bridge financing while the company’s IPO stays on hold.

That is a very fast jump. In March, OpenAI closed $122 billion in committed capital at an $852 billion post-money valuation, then the biggest private funding round Silicon Valley had seen. The company also completed a $7 billion employee tender offer in August at the same valuation. Now the new ask would price OpenAI about 17% above the more recent $1.2 trillion chatter reported in September, and roughly 64% above that March mark.

The pitch gets easier when the numbers keep moving in your favor. Axios reported, and Reuters confirmed through a source, that OpenAI’s annualized revenue run rate is nearing $70 billion. Enterprise sales have more than doubled since the start of the third quarter, and consumer revenue in the third quarter has already topped all of 2025. That is a run rate, not booked annual sales, and Axios could not learn the expenses. Still, by TFN’s calculation, a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation works out to about 20 times that pace.

OpenAI is also trying to keep its options open. It has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, but the private round would let it keep watching how public investors react before picking a price. That matters because Anthropic has become the benchmark in the background. It raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May and filed for an IPO on June 1, with Reuters reporting a $42 billion net loss in 2025, nearly $4.6 billion in revenue, and $518 billion in planned cloud and infrastructure obligations.

And the money behind OpenAI’s earlier financing has some sharp edges. Bloomberg reported that Amazon agreed to invest $50 billion, but $35 billion of that depends on OpenAI going public or hitting an AGI milestone. So the company is asking private investors to pay up now while the public market may get the first real test later. That is a bold order, but then this whole race has been one long contest in who blinks first.