OpenAI Races Anthropic for Pre-IPO Funding Window, $30 Billion New Funding May Push Valuation to $1.4 Trillion

TradingKey - OpenAI is accelerating a new funding round, aiming to lock in institutional capital before rival Anthropic's expected mid-November listing.

According to Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI plans to raise about $30 billion, which could value the company at over $1.4 trillion after the deal, with SoftBank Group, Abu Dhabi sovereign investor MGX, and other existing shareholders in talks to participate.

Unlike typical funding rounds of a similar scale that take months to complete, OpenAI has significantly compressed its deal timeline. With Anthropic's imminent IPO, both companies are simultaneously approaching sovereign wealth funds, long-term asset managers, and major technology investors. For capital available for investment in private AI companies, OpenAI's funding round and Anthropic's listing are in direct competition.

As Anthropic held its investor day last week, OpenAI also met with several long-term funds and sovereign wealth funds. Some investors believe OpenAI aims to lock in capital before Anthropic discloses more financial data, avoiding a direct comparison between the two on revenue growth, profitability, and computing costs.

OpenAI told potential investors that following the launch of GPT-6 Astra, its annualized revenue has reached approximately $50 billion, with expectations to increase further to $70 billion by the end of the year. Management also highlighted usage growth driven by price cuts on lower-cost models as one of the key growth drivers to investors.

It should be noted that the figures disclosed by OpenAI and Anthropic cannot be directly compared. OpenAI recognizes revenue on a net basis, deducting upfront the share allocated to cloud services and other partners, whereas Anthropic counts the gross contract value sold through third-party cloud platforms as revenue. While both approaches comply with accounting standards, they result in significant accounting discrepancies in the revenue figures reported by the two companies.

Anthropic previously disclosed that its third-quarter revenue rose to $16.8 billion from approximately $11.6 billion in the second quarter, representing a quarter-over-quarter increase of about 45%. This figure reflects single-quarter revenue, whereas OpenAI's $50 billion is annualized revenue, so it cannot be simply concluded that Anthropic's business scale has surpassed OpenAI's. However, Anthropic's quarterly growth rate has slowed compared to earlier in the year, prompting some investors to re-evaluate its IPO valuation.

According to reports, some Anthropic shareholders and potential investors believe its reasonable IPO valuation may be closer to $1.5 trillion rather than the previously discussed $2 trillion. If OpenAI can complete its financing first at a valuation exceeding $1.4 trillion, it could establish a new market pricing benchmark before Anthropic's official listing, while mitigating the impact of its rival's financial disclosures on its own valuation negotiations.

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OpenAI has more pragmatic reasons behind its urgency to raise capital. Training and running frontier models require continuous purchases of chips, data center leases, and investments in power infrastructure, making it imperative for the company to maintain ample liquidity. Should tech stock volatility intensify and the IPO market continue to cool, leading to a further delay of its listing originally planned for 2027, the new funds could also serve to strengthen its balance sheet and sustain its compute expansion.

In March this year, OpenAI completed a funding round of approximately $122 billion, reaching a post-money valuation of $852 billion. Among the investors, Amazon committed to invest up to $50 billion, while SoftBank and other major institutions also participated in the deal. If it raises another $30 billion at a valuation exceeding $1.4 trillion this time, it would mean OpenAI's valuation could surge by more than 60% in just over half a year.

However, the current market environment has noticeably weakened compared to earlier this year, as oil price volatility, rising bond yields, and AI infrastructure debt risks erode investor tolerance for highly valued tech companies. CoreWeave's recent sell-off in both stocks and bonds has further raised market skepticism regarding the data center expansion model. Companies such as AirTrunk REIT, Firmus, and SB Energy have also paused or withdrawn their listing plans.