OpenAI has closed a new funding round that values the company at $1.25 trillion, raising roughly $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would make OpenAI one of the most valuable private companies in the world, but the figure falls well short of what the ChatGPT maker initially sought: people familiar with the talks say OpenAI had hoped to raise as much as $30 billion at a valuation of $1.4 trillion before trimming its target to $20 billion.
The round follows OpenAI's March raise of $122 billion in committed capital at an $852 billion valuation — meaning its valuation has risen roughly 47 percent in eight months even as the amount of fresh capital collected fell sharply short of plan. Investors reportedly pulled back after a sharp drop in tech stocks and after this month's midterm elections exposed how far public opinion has turned against AI companies and the data-center buildouts tied to them.
The scaled-back raise comes against a rockier backdrop for AI valuations broadly. Nasdaq-listed tech shares slid into correction territory in the days around the U.S. midterm elections, as investors grew more skeptical of the enormous capital expenditure AI companies have committed to data centers and chips without yet showing matching revenue. A rival outlet's running tally of what the scaled-back round means for AI stocks found the retrenchment rippling across other AI-linked names, not just OpenAI's own cap table.
The news comes as OpenAI's closest rival, Anthropic, has filed its S-1 paperwork to go public, setting up a race between the two companies to be the first large AI lab to list on a public exchange. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said earlier this year that OpenAI was holding off on an IPO of its own until it could make more confident claims about the safety of its models, without giving a specific timeline. "I think it's also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public," he said at the time.
Whether OpenAI now accelerates its own IPO plans to keep pace with Anthropic — or continues to raise private capital while it builds out its safety case — is likely to be one of the defining questions for the AI industry heading into next year.