OpenAI wants to close a $30 billion funding round before its biggest rival even rings the opening bell. According to people familiar with the talks, cited by Reuters and Bloomberg, the company is negotiating a valuation above $1.4 trillion — on top of whatever new cash comes in.
That figure would mark a 64% jump in just seven months. Back in March, OpenAI closed a round at $122 billion, valuing the company at $852 billion. This time, SoftBank and Abu Dhabi's MGX are reportedly in the mix, alongside existing backers.
The timing isn't an accident. Anthropic is on track to go public in mid-November, and OpenAI appears determined to set its own price tag before investors start comparing the two companies side by side. To justify the number, OpenAI is pointing to annualized revenue of $50 billion following the launch of GPT-6 Astra, with a target of $70 billion by year-end.
Even so, a $1.4 trillion valuation works out to roughly 28 times current revenue — or 20 times the year-end projection. That's a steep multiple by any standard; established tech giants like Microsoft or Alphabet trade at a fraction of that relative to earnings. Anthropic, for its part, grew quarterly revenue from $11.6 billion to $16.8 billion — fast, but still well behind OpenAI's scale.
Nothing here is locked in. The talks are described as early-stage, and neither the final amount nor the valuation has been confirmed by either company. OpenAI itself has pushed its own IPO back to 2027, for now choosing private capital — and the freedom from quarterly scrutiny that comes with it.
