OpenAI is closing in on a funding round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, CNBC reported on Thursday, in what would be the largest private financing ever attempted by an AI company. Investors from the United Arab Emirates are leading the round alongside Coatue, according to people familiar with the deal who spoke to CNBC, and OpenAI has told investors it wants signatures by the end of next week.
The figure is a step down from the price OpenAI was pitching only days earlier. Reuters reported on October 19 that the company was racing to secure about $30 billion at a valuation above $1.4 trillion, with SoftBank and Abu Dhabi’s MGX among the existing backers in talks. The two reports, from separate newsrooms citing separate sources, describe the same fundraising effort at two different prices — a sign the terms moved while OpenAI was in the market.
The Terms CNBC Reported On Thursday
CNBC’s sources said the $1.25 trillion valuation is pre-money, meaning it excludes the new capital itself; if the full $30 billion were raised, the implied post-money value would be about $1.28 trillion. The final size of the round is still being determined, and the terms under negotiation could still change. OpenAI declined to comment on the report.
Alongside the equity, OpenAI is negotiating a commercial arrangement that would secure more computing capacity from the UAE, one person told CNBC. The structure echoes the company’s recent pattern of pairing capital with infrastructure: its March financing raised $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation and included a commitment from Amazon to invest up to $50 billion. OpenAI filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering in June, and how OpenAI makes money — subscriptions, API sales and licensing — is what the new valuation ultimately has to support.
A Race Against Anthropic’s Listing
Reuters reported that OpenAI held meetings with long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds last week, while Anthropic was hosting its own investor day, and that the round is expected to move faster than is typical for a transaction of this size. One driver is the calendar: Anthropic’s stock market debut is expected in mid-November, and OpenAI wants commitments secured before Anthropic’s financial disclosures invite direct comparisons between the two labs.
OpenAI is pitching investors on annualized revenue of about $50 billion following the launch of its GPT-6 Astra model, rising to $70 billion by year-end, according to a person cited by Reuters, and says price cuts on its cheaper models have lifted usage. Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, up from $11.6 billion in the second quarter, and CNBC reports it is seeking a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuation for its public debut, after raising $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May. Anthropic’s draft IPO filing showed an $80.7 billion first-half loss on $16.3 billion of revenue. The two companies have even argued over how revenue should be counted: OpenAI records revenue net of partners’ shares and has accused Anthropic of counting the gross value of cloud-sold contracts, while Anthropic says it follows established accounting practices, Reuters reported.
An Opportunistic Bridge, Not A Listing
The financing is being positioned to investors as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of a public listing, CNBC’s sources said. An OpenAI IPO will likely come in 2027, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told employees. Reuters reported that the extra capital would also fund OpenAI’s substantial infrastructure commitments and strengthen its balance sheet if weaker market conditions delay that listing.
The backdrop is unsettled. CNBC noted jitters around CoreWeave and questions about future financing conditions as interest rates rise, and US technology shares fell sharply on Thursday as investors questioned the cost of the AI buildout. A round signed at $1.25 trillion in that environment would still make OpenAI the most valuable private company ever, well ahead of the $852 billion mark it set in March.
Why It Matters
OpenAI’s round is a price check for the whole frontier AI sector, taken weeks before public markets deliver their first one. A cut of roughly $150 billion from the $1.4 trillion pitch suggests investors are no longer simply accepting the opening number, even for the company behind ChatGPT, and whatever price OpenAI finally signs at will anchor expectations for Anthropic’s debut and for the sovereign and institutional funds both labs are courting. The UAE’s role matters beyond the cheque: pairing equity with computing capacity ties Gulf capital directly into the infrastructure OpenAI needs, much as Amazon’s commitment did in March. For rival platforms, a $30 billion war chest raised before any listing means the spending race on models, distribution and compute continues at private-market speed for at least another year.
Background
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab and became the defining company of the generative AI era after ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022 turned its models into a mass-market product. Its March 2026 financing — $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation — was the largest private round in technology history, and the company has since filed confidentially to go public while maintaining, through Friar, that a listing is a 2027 event. The new round would be its second record-setting raise in under a year.
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