OpenAI has closed an initial $11 billion in new capital at a $1.25 trillion valuation, according to reports on Friday from Bloomberg and Reuters. The money, wired on 6 November, marks the first tranche of an expanded OpenAI funding round that could reach up to $20 billion in the coming weeks.
Key points
- OpenAI closed an initial $11 billion tranche of funding, valuing the company at $1.25 trillion.
- The developer reduced its target from an earlier goal of $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion valuation following market declines.
- SoftBank and MGX backed the latest tranche, extending their existing stakes.
- Rival Anthropic filed for an initial public offering last week, while OpenAI intends to delay its own listing until at least 2027.
Scaled targets and investor caution
The $11 billion wire arrived after weeks of shifting negotiations. OpenAI originally sought to secure more than $30 billion at a valuation of between $1.4 trillion and $1.5 trillion, investors told Bloomberg and Reuters. That figure fell as technology shares dropped and investor scrutiny of heavy artificial intelligence infrastructure spending mounted.
Earlier reports indicated that OpenAI cut its funding target to $20bn as broader stock indices retreated. Political headwinds also factored into market sentiment following United States midterm elections that highlighted voter pushback against regional data centre developments.
SoftBank and MGX contributed to the initial $11 billion close, according to people familiar with the transaction. Both firms were existing shareholders before the latest transaction. When OpenAI completed its earlier financing round at the end of March, it gathered $122 billion from backers, pegging the business at an $852 billion valuation once the deal finalised. Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank acted as anchor participants in that deal, with ongoing backing from Microsoft. SoftBank also co-led the financing alongside MGX, a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, TPG and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.
OpenAI also collected more than $3 billion from individual investors through private banking networks in March. It expanded an undrawn revolving credit facility to roughly $4.7 billion at the same time.
Commitments across chips and data centres
The fresh injection of capital lands as OpenAI manages steep operational costs. In July, The Information reported that the San Francisco firm held more than $665 billion in long-term chip and data centre commitments.
OpenAI distributes its compute workloads across multiple cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and CoreWeave. Its hardware footprint relies on accelerators from Nvidia and AMD, as well as AWS Trainium chips, Cerebras systems and a custom inference processor designed alongside Broadcom.
The company also collaborates with Oracle, SBE and SoftBank on data centre facilities. OpenAI maintains that relying on varied architectures lowers the structural cost of delivering intelligence at scale.
Revenue expansion and enterprise demand
Despite heavy capital requirements, OpenAI has reported rising revenue. The Financial Times reported last month that the firm generated $50 billion in net annualised revenue at the end of the third quarter, a 77 per cent increase year on year.
That growth followed an internal slowdown during the first half of 2026. OpenAI President Greg Brockman said on Wednesday that expansion picked up after the June debut of GPT-5.6 Sol, along with the rollout of the ChatGPT Work application and coding assistants.
On Thursday, the developer released GPT-6 Cyber, a model built specifically for defensive and offensive security tasks. Company engineers used the system to generate 948 Linux exploits and locate 81 critical vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser.
Enterprise clients now represent a growing share of the business. In March, enterprise accounts made up over 40 per cent of total sales, with management projecting parity between business and consumer revenue by the end of 2026. At that time, ChatGPT logged more than 900 million weekly active users and 50 million paying subscribers.
Anthropic IPO plans and listing timelines
The funding round unfolds against the backdrop of an impending public debut from Anthropic. OpenAI’s primary competitor filed its S-1 registration statement last week, aiming to complete an initial public offering before Thanksgiving.
Investor sentiment has cooled across the sector, dampening expectations for Anthropic as well. Potential share buyers are weighing valuations between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg, down from earlier hopes of $2 trillion. Anthropic reported that its third-quarter revenue surged 1,127 per cent year on year in its regulatory filing.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has rejected calls to rush into the public markets. Speaking earlier this year, Altman said the company was prioritising model safety over a swift public listing, though he acknowledged the dilemma.
“I think it’s also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public,” Altman said.
OpenAI does not expect to list its shares until 2027. For now, the remainder of its current equity round is expected to close in the coming weeks.
