OpenAI in talks with UAE funds and BlackRock for $30B round at a fixed $1.4T price: Report

OpenAI is trying to pull together a private round of at least $30 billion, and the names around the table are as heavyweight as you’d expect: funds from the United Arab Emirates and BlackRock. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the talks, says Abu Dhabi’s MGX is part of the UAE side and that the group has discussed putting in as much as $10 billion together. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is in talks to join them.

The unusual bit is the pricing. OpenAI is reportedly presenting a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation as fixed, even though no lead investor has been chosen. That makes the round look less like a negotiation and more like an invitation to accept the number and move on. The timing is also brisk: this would come about six months after OpenAI’s $122 billion raise at an $852 billion valuation.

MGX is not new to OpenAI, or to the wider AI money machine. It has already invested in earlier rounds of OpenAI and Anthropic, and it joined OpenAI’s March round. Bloomberg also reported in June that MGX had raised close to $50 billion from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and other institutions for AI infrastructure and technology. BlackRock and MGX are also co-founders of the AI Infrastructure Partnership, along with Global Infrastructure Partners and Microsoft, so the pairing has an obvious logic to it.

OpenAI is not stopping there. The company has also sounded out existing backers, including the University of California’s endowment, while Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz have considered adding capital. And the valuation math is getting more aggressive by the month: $1.4 trillion is 64% above the March post-money figure, and roughly 17% above the $1.2 trillion OpenAI was reportedly weighing earlier. Add the new money, and the post-money value lands around $1.43 trillion.

Behind all this sits a company that still isn’t preparing to list. Sam Altman has said going public now would be “an ill-advised moment,” pointing to safety concerns, and OpenAI has ruled out an IPO in 2026. That sits awkwardly beside Amazon’s March-round commitment structure, where $35 billion of its $50 billion depends on OpenAI going public or hitting an artificial general intelligence milestone. For now, though, OpenAI looks content to keep raising the bar in private and letting everyone else decide whether $1.4 trillion is a price or just a posture.