A round timed against someone else’s listing
OpenAI is trying to lock in commitments for a funding round of roughly $30bn at a valuation above $1.4tn, and is racing to do it before Anthropic goes public. Reuters reported the plan on 19 October, citing two people familiar with the discussions. Neither the amount nor the valuation is settled.
The timing is the story. Anthropic’s listing is expected in mid-November, and the two labs are asking the same pool of institutional money for capital within weeks of each other. Closing first means investors price OpenAI before they can set its numbers beside a prospectus.
SoftBank and the Abu Dhabi fund MGX are among the existing backers said to be in talks to join. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment to Reuters.
What $1.4tn would mean
OpenAI’s last priced round, in March, valued it at $852bn alongside $122bn in committed funding. A round above $1.4tn would be a step up of more than 60% in roughly seven months.
The company has told prospective investors it is running at about $50bn in annualised revenue following the release of GPT-6 Astra, and expects roughly $70bn by the end of the year. Those are annualised run rates, not booked full-year sales, and they are the company’s own figures.
Two sets of numbers, told differently
Anthropic has disclosed quarterly revenue of $16.8bn for the third quarter, up from $11.6bn in the second — growth of 45% quarter on quarter, down sharply from the 147% it reported earlier in the year. Reuters has previously reported that some investors want its IPO priced at $1.5tn rather than the higher figures discussed internally.
That is the comparison OpenAI would avoid by closing early. A private round is negotiated with a handful of investors under NDA; an IPO publishes audited figures and lets everyone do the arithmetic on both companies at once.
Investors told Reuters that OpenAI also needs the money for its own reasons: the infrastructure commitments it has signed, and a balance sheet that has to hold if weaker public markets push its own planned 2027 listing further out.
What to watch
Three things will tell you whether this holds. Whether the round closes at or below $1.4tn. Whether Anthropic’s listing lands in mid-November or slips. And whether SoftBank, which has already carried a large share of OpenAI’s funding, takes the same proportion again — or whether MGX and others have to make up the difference.
