OpenAI raises $11 billion at $1.25 trillion valuation as Anthropic files to go public

OpenAI hits a $1.25 trillion valuation

OpenAI has closed a new funding round that raises $11 billion and values the company at $1.25 trillion, according to The Verge, citing Bloomberg. That valuation would place the company among the most valuable in the world. The deal lands not long after OpenAI collected $122 billion from investors in March at a valuation of $852 billion — a figure the new round lifts by nearly half.

The raise could still grow, but it has already shrunk

The $11 billion may not be the final number. The Verge reports that Bloomberg's account, echoing earlier reporting from the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, indicates OpenAI is still pursuing additional investment that could push the round to $20 billion. The company had originally hoped to bring in as much as $30 billion at a higher valuation of $1.4 trillion, according to those reports. Those plans were scaled back after tech stocks dropped and the results of the midterm elections showed how much public opinion has turned against AI companies and the data center projects they depend on.

Anthropic moves toward the public market

The funding news arrives as OpenAI's chief rival takes a different route to capital. Anthropic filed its S-1 last week, the formal paperwork that begins the process of an initial public offering. OpenAI, by contrast, is staying private for now. CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that the company is holding off on its own IPO until it can make more confident claims about the safety of its models, and he declined to give a timeline. He did flag one downside to waiting, telling reporters at the time: "I think it's also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public."

Two paths to capital

Taken together, the developments frame an unusual moment for the AI industry. OpenAI is tapping private investors at a scale once reserved for public markets, while Anthropic prepares to let public investors set its price directly. How each approach performs — a $1.25 trillion private valuation on one side and an IPO pricing on the other — will offer a rare side-by-side read on whether the market believes AI companies' prospects can justify the enormous sums they are spending on computing infrastructure.

Why it matters

The gap between what OpenAI wanted and what it secured is the detail worth watching. A reported target of $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, trimmed to $11 billion at $1.25 trillion, suggests that even the most closely watched company in technology cannot fully insulate itself from a weaker stock market or growing political resistance to AI and data center expansion. For an industry whose plans hinge on raising staggering amounts of capital to build out computing capacity, any cooling in investor appetite is consequential. And with Anthropic's S-1 now on file, the public market will soon get its first direct opportunity to price a frontier AI lab — a listing likely to become the benchmark against which OpenAI's private valuation, and its eventual decision on going public, will be measured.