OpenAI's $1.25T Raise and IPO Race

OpenAI is close to finalizing an OpenAI funding round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, CNBC reported on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, citing people familiar with the deal. Investors from the United Arab Emirates and the investment firm Coatue are leading the financing, and OpenAI told investors it is aiming to have signatures by the end of next week, the people said.

Image: The San Francisco skyline, home to OpenAI’s headquarters, used for illustration. Photo: Dietmar Rabich, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The deal at a glance: size, timing and who is leading

Here is what has been reported so far about the round. None of it is final, and OpenAI declined to comment to TechCrunch.

Size: up to $30 billion in new money. CNBC said the final size of the round is still being determined.
Valuation: $1.25 trillion before the new cash goes in (pre-money). Adding the full $30 billion would put the post-money figure at roughly $1.28 trillion.
Leads: investors from the UAE alongside Coatue, according to CNBC.
Timing: talks kicked off after investors approached OpenAI with proposals in September. OpenAI told investors on Oct. 22 that it wants signatures by the end of next week, which would be around Oct. 30.
Purpose: CNBC said the financing is being positioned as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of a potential initial public offering.
Side deal: alongside the investment, OpenAI is negotiating a commercial agreement that would secure more computing capacity from the UAE, according to one person who spoke to CNBC.

If it closes at that price, the round would make OpenAI the most valuable private company ever, TechCrunch noted.

Why the valuation came down from $1.4 trillion

The $1.25 trillion figure is lower than numbers that circulated earlier. TechCrunch pointed out that Bloomberg had reported about a month ago that OpenAI was working on a $30 billion raise at a $1.4 trillion valuation, and Investing.com noted that Reuters had reported earlier this week that the company was seeking more than $1.4 trillion. Bloomberg reported on Oct. 22 that OpenAI shifted the value discussed in the talks by $150 billion during the final stages of negotiation. The Financial Times reported that OpenAI cut its target after facing resistance from some investors to the $1.4 trillion price tag.

Even the reduced figure is a steep climb from OpenAI’s last raise. In March 2026 the company closed a $122 billion financing that valued it at $852 billion post-money, according to TechCrunch and Investing.com. A $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation would mark an increase of roughly 47 percent in about seven months.

The IPO question

OpenAI confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June but has not said when it plans to list, CNBC reported. The company’s own leaders have sent mixed public signals on timing. CFO Sarah Friar told employees in August that the AI lab “will be a public company in 2027,” according to CNBC. The following month, CEO Sam Altman said that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public,” CNBC reported.

A private round at this price matters for the eventual listing in two ways. It gives OpenAI more cash to fund operations without tapping public markets, and it sets a benchmark that a future IPO price would be measured against. TechCrunch noted that the higher valuation “would also raise the bar even higher” for the forthcoming IPO.

The money behind the compute

The size of these rounds tracks the cost of building and running frontier AI models. OpenAI told investors in February that it is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending by 2030, CNBC reported. The reported UAE compute deal attached to this round fits that pattern: capital and data-center capacity are increasingly being negotiated together.

The backdrop is less friendly than it was earlier in the year. Investing.com reported that rising interest rates, tech-stock volatility and investor scrutiny of AI infrastructure spending have complicated fundraising and IPO plans across the sector. That environment is the context for the reported price cut in OpenAI’s talks.

The Anthropic comparison

The round lands as OpenAI’s main rival heads toward public markets. Anthropic confidentially filed its own prospectus in June and is meeting with prospective investors, CNBC reported, and it is reportedly seeking a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in its offering. Anthropic closed a $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation in May. Investing.com, citing Reuters, said Anthropic is preparing for an expected IPO in November and that OpenAI wants to secure commitments before Anthropic’s IPO disclosures invite closer comparisons between the two companies.

We broke down the numbers in Anthropic’s draft S-1, which showed $16.3 billion in revenue and an $80.7 billion loss. OpenAI’s partnerships are also shifting: earlier this week we reported on OpenAI models arriving on Google Cloud as Microsoft’s exclusivity fades.

What to watch next

The key dates and markers in the coming days:

Signatures: whether OpenAI gets commitments by the end of next week, as it told investors it hopes to.
Final size: whether the round reaches the full $30 billion or closes smaller.
The UAE compute agreement: whether a capacity deal is announced alongside the investment, and on what terms.
Anthropic’s public filing: TechCrunch reported that rumors suggest Anthropic’s public S-1 could appear “any day now,” which would give investors the first detailed side-by-side look at the two companies’ finances.

For Boston’s AI startups and the investors who back them, the outcome matters too. A record private valuation for OpenAI, or a visible discount, will feed into how late-stage AI companies everywhere are priced in the months ahead.

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OpenAI Funding Round Nears $30 Billion at a $1.25 Trillion Valuation