OpenAI reportedly raises $11 billion toward round at $1.25 trillion valuation

OpenAI brings in $11 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation

OpenAI has pulled in $11 billion so far in a new funding round that values the AI lab at $1.25 trillion, according to a Bloomberg report published on Friday and relayed by TechCrunch. The round has not closed yet; Bloomberg reports that it is expected to wrap up in the coming weeks and could ultimately total around $20 billion.

Smaller than the round OpenAI was chasing

The numbers point to a round that has contracted along the way. In late September, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was looking to raise $30 billion in the upcoming round. The $11 billion already banked — and even the roughly $20 billion the round might reach at completion — come in far below that earlier figure.

TechCrunch says it contacted OpenAI for comment and had received no reply when its story ran.

Anthropic's IPO is being repriced too

The funding news landed only hours after Bloomberg published a separate report on OpenAI's chief rival. Potential buyers of shares in Anthropic's IPO are, per that report, weighing a valuation as low as $1.1 trillion — a sharp drop from the roughly $2 trillion that investors were said to be expecting about a month earlier.

Read together, the two stories describe private-market money still flowing to the largest AI labs, but at prices buyers are beginning to resist.

A public listing pushed to next year

OpenAI had previously signalled an intention to go public this year but subsequently delayed those plans, and TechCrunch reports that the company is now expected to IPO at some point next year.

The timing is delicate. In TechCrunch's assessment, the AI market is in a fragile state: a Democratic landslide in the U.S. midterms and strongly negative voter sentiment toward data centers have unsettled investors, many of whom now expect regulatory challenges ahead.

Why it matters

A $1.25 trillion valuation for a still-private company is a landmark number, and it shows that enormous capital remains available to OpenAI even in a shaky market. But the detail beneath the headline is less rosy. The round is smaller than the $30 billion OpenAI was reportedly pursuing, it is still open, and it is being finalised just as investors in Anthropic's IPO contemplate a price barely below OpenAI's own mark. If trillion-dollar valuations turn out to be ceilings rather than floors — and if U.S. politics hardens against the data center buildout that AI depends on — the gap between what AI labs can raise and what they need to spend becomes the industry's defining tension.