OpenAI reportedly raising up to $30B at $1.25 trillion valuation ahead of IPO

OpenAI is working on a private round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, according to sources cited by CNBC in a report covered by TechCrunch on October 22. Rather than accelerating toward the public markets, the ChatGPT maker appears set to add one more record-setting private round first. Coatue and investors from the United Arab Emirates are reportedly leading the round, and OpenAI declined to comment when approached.

The numbers, and where they disagree

The valuation is not settled. CNBC's sources describe a $1.25 trillion pre-money figure, while a Bloomberg report published roughly a month earlier said OpenAI was working on $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation. Both outlets report that terms are still under negotiation, so the final number could move or the round could change shape entirely. Even the lower figure would be unprecedented: as TechCrunch notes, a valuation above $1 trillion would make OpenAI the most highly valued private company in history.

Capital tied to computing capacity

According to CNBC, the UAE portion of the investment may be coupled with a deal to secure additional computing capacity for OpenAI from the UAE. If that structure holds, the round would bundle the two things frontier labs now need most — money and compute — into a single negotiation, with a sovereign investor on the other side of both.

A higher bar for the IPO

The round also resets expectations for the listing OpenAI has been preparing. According to TechCrunch, the company filed confidential IPO paperwork in June, and its previous raise, in March, valued it at $852 billion post-money. A private mark of $1.25 trillion pre-money would be a step up of nearly $400 billion on paper in about seven months, and it would become the reference point against which public investors judge the eventual offering.

Read-through to Anthropic

TechCrunch also points to the consequences for Anthropic, whose IPO is widely viewed as closer at hand. Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May, in what many assumed would be its last large round before going public, and it filed confidential paperwork in June as well. CNBC reports that the latest figures have Anthropic seeking $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion for its public debut, with rumors that a public S-1 filing could arrive any day. OpenAI clearing a trillion dollars privately gives Anthropic cover to aim high — and raises the bar for what both companies will need to justify once public-market investors are involved.

Why it matters

A trillion-dollar private valuation would be a first, and it shows that the largest AI labs can raise IPO-scale capital without accepting the disclosure and scrutiny of public markets. That extends the period in which valuations are set by a small group of private negotiators rather than the broader market. It also hard-wires a very high anchor for OpenAI's eventual listing — and, by extension, for Anthropic's — meaning public investors will likely be asked to underwrite trillion-dollar-plus AI valuations in the near term. Finally, the reported pairing of UAE money with UAE compute capacity underlines how inseparable financing and infrastructure have become for frontier AI development.