OpenAI is in early discussions with major investors about raising another round of private capital at a valuation of roughly $1.2 trillion, potentially delivering another dramatic increase in the ChatGPT maker’s value before an eventual IPO.
The talks are preliminary, and the amount OpenAI could raise has not yet been determined, according to the Financial Times and Reuters. The discussions were initiated by investors rather than OpenAI itself, and there is no guarantee a transaction will ultimately take place.
The potential financing comes only months after OpenAI completed a staggering $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation at the end of March. A $1.2 trillion valuation would represent an increase of roughly 41% from that round.
OpenAI’s Valuation Could Jump by Nearly $350 Billion
Crossing the $1 trillion threshold would place OpenAI among a tiny group of companies ever valued at that level — despite the AI developer remaining privately held.
The renewed investor interest has been supported by stronger performance from OpenAI’s latest models and accelerating revenue. The company’s annualized revenue surpassed $40 billion in August, according to the Financial Times.
The discussions are particularly notable because OpenAI does not appear to urgently need additional capital. Its March financing already provided the company with substantial resources, and the latest talks reportedly originated from investors seeking additional exposure to the company.
But frontier AI remains exceptionally capital-intensive.
OpenAI spent about $34 billion last year, according to the Financial Times, as training increasingly advanced models and operating them for hundreds of millions of users required enormous computing resources.
Reuters previously reported that OpenAI expects cumulative compute spending of around $600 billion through 2030, illustrating the scale of the infrastructure required to remain at the frontier of artificial intelligence.
New Funding Could Come Before an IPO
The financing discussions also raise questions about the timing of OpenAI’s eventual stock-market debut.
CEO Sam Altman recently ruled out an IPO in 2026, saying the company still has substantial work to do around AI safety, model alignment and the relationship between frontier AI developers and governments.
That means any new private financing would likely provide OpenAI with additional capital while giving it more time before facing the pressures and disclosure requirements of public markets.
The timing of a potential round may ultimately depend on when OpenAI decides it is ready to pursue an IPO, according to the Financial Times.
OpenAI and Anthropic Take Different Routes to Public Markets
The potential financing also highlights the increasingly different capital-market strategies of OpenAI and its biggest frontier AI rival, Anthropic.
While OpenAI has pushed its IPO timeline beyond 2026, Anthropic is moving toward a potential listing that could value the Claude developer at around $2 trillion.
The two companies are competing for customers, researchers, computing capacity and investor capital at a scale rarely seen among private technology companies.
Their extraordinary valuations reflect expectations that frontier AI developers could eventually become some of the world’s largest businesses. But those valuations also depend on enormous future revenue growth while both companies continue committing vast amounts of capital to computing infrastructure and model development.
For OpenAI, a $1.2 trillion private valuation would represent another major milestone.
More importantly, the fact that investors reportedly initiated the latest discussions suggests that appetite for exposure to the company remains strong even after one of the largest private funding rounds ever completed.
If a deal ultimately goes forward, OpenAI could enter 2027 with a valuation above $1 trillion, billions of dollars in additional capital and even greater expectations surrounding what could eventually become one of the most closely watched IPOs in market history.
