OpenAI races to lock in $30B at a $1.4T valuation before Anthropic’s IPO
Tech Funding News Abhinaya Prabhu
OpenAI is trying to raise about $30B at a price above $1.4T. It’s moving before Anthropic’s IPO, hoping to grab the money first.
Based on reporting by Tech Funding News, Abhinaya Prabhu — read the original for the full story.
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OpenAI is pushing to raise about $30 billion at a valuation above $1.4 trillion, according to Reuters. SoftBank Group and Abu Dhabi’s MGX are in talks to join the round, even as Anthropic is said to be heading toward an IPO in mid-November.
That timing is the point. In the week Anthropic held its investor day on October 14, OpenAI was meeting long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds — the same broad pool of capital Anthropic is expected to court when it goes public. OpenAI is presenting the $1.4 trillion figure as a fixed pre-money price, despite not yet having a lead investor locked in.
The arithmetic is eye-catching. At that valuation, OpenAI would be worth about 28 times its reported $50 billion in annualized revenue. The new money would come less than seven months after March’s $122 billion raise at an $852 billion valuation, which was anchored by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. On that comparison alone, the new price is about 64% higher.
There’s a practical reason for the rush, not just a flashy one. People familiar with OpenAI’s thinking told Reuters it needs cash for infrastructure commitments and wants a cushion in case weaker IPO markets push back its planned 2027 listing. The market backdrop is ugly: companies in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index have lost more than $1.6 trillion in value in less than two weeks, and debt-heavy AI names such as CoreWeave have been hit hard. If Anthropic lists first, both companies will be measured against the same public numbers. OpenAI clearly wants the first move.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what late-stage AI financing now looks like: not product launches, but a race to corner the same piles of capital before the market gets a proper price tag. The industry keeps asking investors to admire the future while the books are still half-covered. That works until the first IPO prints, and then everyone discovers just how much of the story was vibes with a spreadsheet.
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