OpenAI is aiming to raise $30 billion in a new funding round at a $1.4 trillion valuation, according to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday and carried by Reuters. The figure marks a sharp escalation from mid-September, when the Financial Times reported that the ChatGPT maker had held early talks with investors about a round at more than $1.2 trillion — a discussion Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The Information independently confirmed at the time.
If completed at the targeted scale, the round would rank among the largest private fundraises ever attempted by any company, and it would cement OpenAI's position as the most valuable private technology firm in history. It would also arrive at a peculiar moment: two weeks ago OpenAI publicly ruled out an initial public offering this year, with Sam Altman calling a near-term listing "ill-advised" amid safety concerns. For more context on this story, see our ongoing more AI stories.
From $1.2 Trillion Talks to a $1.4 Trillion Target
The progression from early talks to a formal target has been fast. On September 16, the FT reported OpenAI was in early discussions for a round that could value the company at $1.2 trillion or higher, partly to let longtime backers increase their exposure ahead of a long-anticipated listing. Thirteen days later, Bloomberg reports the company is targeting $30 billion at $1.4 trillion — roughly a 17 percent higher valuation and a sum that would dwarf the $6.6 billion OpenAI raised in 2024 and the $40 billion round led by SoftBank in early 2025.
The escalating numbers reflect both extraordinary investor demand for exposure to frontier AI and the extraordinary cost of staying in the race. OpenAI's own leaked financials, reported this month, showed a $38.5 billion loss for 2025, and the company projects roughly $278 billion in cash burn through 2030 as it funds data centers, chip purchases and training runs for successive frontier models.
Raising Private Instead of Going Public
The decision to raise another giant private round, rather than accelerate toward the public markets, is a reversal of the expected script. For most of 2026, an OpenAI IPO was treated as inevitable — ChatGPT crossed one billion weekly users over the summer, revenue has climbed steeply, and bankers have circled what would likely have been the largest tech listing ever.
Instead, Altman ruled out a 2026 listing on September 13, saying an IPO this year would be ill-advised, with reporting pointing to safety concerns and the company's desire to avoid public-market scrutiny while frontier models remain in flux. The new round effectively substitutes private capital for an IPO war chest: $30 billion of runway without quarterly earnings calls, disclosure obligations or a share price that can crash with a single safety incident.
Critics see risk in the structure. The round makes OpenAI's valuation trajectory dependent on a small set of private investors continuing to mark up their positions, and it comes as prominent skeptics grow louder. Investor Michael Burry, who disclosed put positions against major AI names earlier this year, expanded his bets this week while warning the AI bubble may burst "sooner than later."
The Valuation Race With Anthropic
OpenAI is not raising in a vacuum. Anthropic filed the paperwork for its own IPO this month, targeting a $2 trillion listing — a prospect Reuters' Breakingviews column on Tuesday called "AI's biggest moonshot." Anthropic's prospectus disclosed an $8 billion loss and roughly $518 billion in planned compute spending, along with an unusual existential-risk warning about its own technology.
The two raisings together represent the largest capital formation in the history of the AI industry, and they are increasingly mirror images: OpenAI staying private to fund an infrastructure buildout measured in the hundreds of billions, Anthropic heading to the public markets to do much the same. Meanwhile the broader financing stack — from Nvidia's vendor-backed deals to the bond yields now at their highest since 2007 — is showing strain that both companies' documents acknowledge in different ways.
What $30 Billion Buys
Bloomberg's report did not specify how OpenAI would deploy the new capital, but the context is not mysterious. The company is in the middle of a multi-hundred-billion-dollar commitment to compute: Stargate data center projects with Oracle, chip supply agreements with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom, and capacity deals that have made OpenAI one of the largest single buyers of AI infrastructure on the planet. Every point of that buildout has a price tag measured in tens of billions.
The money also buys time for monetization to catch up. OpenAI crossed one billion weekly users in July, launched ChatGPT's advertising business this year, and used Tuesday's DevDay to roll out a $500 monthly subscription tier alongside its new Dots agents and the GPT-6.1 Sol model — a deliberate push upmarket as the company tries to convert usage into the revenue its private investors are underwriting.
What Happens Next
A round at this size will not close quietly. Expect negotiations over terms, secondary share sales for employees, and scrutiny of whether a $1.4 trillion valuation — roughly comparable to Alphabet's market capitalization — can be sustained by a company still losing tens of billions a year. For now, the message to markets is simpler: the private AI funding machine still works, and OpenAI intends to keep it running at full capacity until an IPO eventually makes sense. Whenever that is.
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