OpenAI apparently isn’t in a hurry to go public. Instead, it’s lining up one more giant private round, and the number attached to it is hard to process: up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation.
The details come from sources speaking to CNBC, which TechCrunch reported on. Coatue and investors in the UAE are said to be leading. Bloomberg ran a similar story a month ago, but with a $1.4 trillion valuation. So the terms are still moving, and both outlets say they could change. CNBC also says the UAE money might come paired with a deal to give OpenAI more computing capacity. OpenAI declined to comment.
That compute angle deserves attention. Capital and compute have become nearly the same thing for frontier labs. Money raised from Gulf investors that comes back as data center capacity is a pattern we’ve seen across the industry, and it explains why these rounds keep getting larger. Training and serving models at this scale eats cash faster than almost any business in history.
If the round closes above $1 trillion, OpenAI becomes the most valuable private company ever. That’s a record, but the more interesting effect is on the IPO. OpenAI filed confidential paperwork in June, after a March raise valued it at $852 billion post-money. A $1.25 trillion mark means public investors will be asked to pay even more, and the company will have to show growth that justifies it. Private rounds are easy to price on vision. Public markets are less patient.
Anthropic is the obvious comparison. It raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May, a round many assumed was its last before listing. It also filed confidentially in June. Rumors say its public S-1 could land any day, and CNBC reports it’s eyeing a $1.5 to $2 trillion valuation for its debut. That would put it above OpenAI’s private number.
Which is the real story. Two labs, both filed, both chasing valuations that would have sounded absurd two years ago. Whoever lists first sets the benchmark for the other, and a weak reception would hit both. For developers and founders, this isn’t just finance gossip. These valuations shape pricing, API subsidies and how aggressively each company can spend on compute. Expect that spending to continue.
Is it noise? Not really. But treat the exact figures with caution until a deal is signed. The gap between $1.25 trillion and $1.4 trillion in a single month tells you how fluid this still is.
