OpenAI Races to Raise $30 Billion at Over $1.4 Trillion Valuation Before Anthropic’s November IPO, Reuters Reports

The Deal: $30 Billion on a Fast Clock

OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments for a funding round of about $30 billion that could value the ChatGPT maker at more than $1.4 trillion — and it wants the money locked in before rival Anthropic’s expected public market debut in mid-November, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.

The unusually compressed timetable, first reported by Reuters on Monday, reflects what the sources describe as a deliberate attempt to get ahead of Anthropic, with the two frontier AI laboratories now tapping into an increasingly overlapping pool of investors. One of the people said OpenAI is seeking to capitalize on its recent revenue growth following the launch of new models.

SoftBank Group, Abu Dhabi-based MGX and other existing backers are in talks to join the round, according to one of the people. Reuters reported that OpenAI held meetings with long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds last week — while Anthropic was hosting its own investor day — and that the fundraising is expected to move faster than is typical for an offering of its size.

The acceleration comes amid growing concern about rising interest rates, significant volatility in technology stocks and rising scrutiny of AI valuations. Investors familiar with the company also say OpenAI needs the capital to fund its substantial infrastructure commitments — and to bolster its balance sheet if a deterioration in the IPO markets further delays its planned 2027 listing.

OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment for the report, while Anthropic and MGX did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The Pitch: $50 Billion Today, $70 Billion by Year’s End

According to Reuters, OpenAI is pitching investors on growth that accelerated after the launch of its GPT-6 Astra model. The company says it has reached $50 billion in annualized revenue and expects that figure to rise to $70 billion by year-end, one of the people said.

The company has also cut prices on its cheaper models, which it said has boosted usage, and told investors it can lower the price of AI models further still. That combination — soaring top-line growth paired with falling unit economics — is the bet OpenAI is asking investors to back at a valuation more than one and a half times the $852 billion at which it was valued in March.

That March round was itself record-breaking: $122 billion in committed capital, including a commitment from Amazon to invest up to $50 billion in the lab. Since then, SoftBank completed the final phase of its own $30 billion investment on 1 October — paid in three $10 billion tranches through its Vision Fund 2 — taking its cumulative investment in OpenAI to $64.6 billion and giving it a 13 per cent stake, according to Reuters.

The Anthropic Clock

The urgency, the sources say, is about what comes next. OpenAI is seeking to complete the fundraising before Anthropic’s financial disclosures give investors a fuller picture of its business — and invite direct comparisons between the two companies, one person said.

The disclosures could prompt investors to press OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, for more details about the company’s revenue growth and financial outlook. The two labs already disagree about how to count: OpenAI records revenue on a net basis, subtracting partner shares upfront, and has accused Anthropic of inflating its revenue by counting the full, gross value of contracts sold through third-party cloud providers. Anthropic told Reuters it follows established accounting practices.

“OpenAI could want to set its own valuation and not have to worry about a comp (comparison),” said Edward Best, co-chair of capital markets at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, who spoke to Reuters on a hypothetical basis and is not working on the deal. “It’s really a two-horse race in terms of being public.”

Anthropic’s numbers tell their own story. Reuters reported that its annualized revenue reached roughly $65 billion by July, and the company told investors its quarterly revenue jumped to $16.8 billion in the third quarter from $11.6 billion in the second. But slowing month-to-month revenue growth has raised concerns among investors about its valuation: Reuters reported last week that some existing and prospective investors have argued for a debut valuation closer to $1.5 trillion instead of the $2 trillion the company desires, after its third-quarter results fell short of expectations.

The Financial Times has previously reported some details of OpenAI’s potential fundraising, according to Reuters.

Market Jitters: Why Timing Matters More Than Ever

The race for capital is playing out against a choppy backdrop. Reuters reports that a number of companies preparing to go public have decided to wait until after Anthropic’s planned IPO, wary of competing for investor demand amid market volatility and a pullback in AI stocks. Some late-stage companies are also timing private fundraising rounds to avoid coinciding with Anthropic’s expected debut, bankers and investors said.

The market has been choppy since September, with volatility in oil prices, rising bond yields and growing concerns about AI safety weighing on investor appetite for technology stocks. Investors are also scrutinizing the cost of AI infrastructure, including the debt needed to finance the data centres powering the boom.

At the centre of the latest concerns is cloud provider CoreWeave, whose shares and debt tumbled last week as investors scrutinized the nearly $50 billion in borrowings used to fund its rapid expansion. Companies in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, widely viewed as a proxy for AI-related semiconductor demand, have shed $1.6 trillion in under two weeks, while AI infrastructure companies have come under particular pressure.

The uncertainty has disrupted what had been expected to be a busy autumn for IPOs. Blackstone-backed AirTrunk REIT, Nvidia-backed Firmus and SoftBank-backed SB Energy have either pulled or paused their listings, Reuters reported. Nuclear services company Holtec cited a “perfect storm,” driven mainly by uncertainty around data-centre demand, when it pulled its US listing last month.

The context stretches further back. Bloomberg News reported in late September — via a Reuters relay — that OpenAI was already targeting at least $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion, describing the discussions as early-stage and the round as bridge financing in place of an IPO. That made Monday’s report not a first sighting of the round, but a sharp acceleration of it: OpenAI wants commitments before Anthropic’s listing, not after.

The Bigger Picture: Trillion-Dollar Promises, Billion-Dollar Bills

For all the fundraising drama, the underlying economics are simple and staggering. Both labs are spending at a pace that makes private capital markets the only plausible fuel. Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, seen exclusively by Reuters in September, showed the company reporting a net loss of $42 billion in 2025 while planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in the coming year — twelve-fold revenue growth to $4.6 billion last year, swallowed by the cost of the buildout.

OpenAI, which says its annualized revenue is approaching $50 billion and climbing, is pitching investors on growth while acknowledging the same infrastructure bill. Its chief executive, Sam Altman, said earlier this month that the company would not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence — making a 2027 listing the current plan, and private capital the bridge to get there.

The field is no longer a duopoly. Anthropic rolled out its Opus 5.5 model last week to counter OpenAI’s momentum since the launch of GPT-6 Astra, ahead of its own expected IPO. Google remains in the fight with its Gemini line. And on 12 October, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full — the company’s first frontier models since the Alexandr Wang-led reorganisation, with Meta claiming benchmark parity with the leading systems.

It is a four-way frontier race, and the prize is not just the best model but the money to build the next one.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The valuation race has replaced the model race — for now

This story is technically about fundraising, but read it as a scoreboard. OpenAI’s pitch — $50 billion annualized revenue today, $70 billion by year-end — is the company converting model momentum into money momentum. The acceleration is not driven by a sudden cash crisis; it is driven by Anthropic’s calendar. In an era when investors must choose between two trillion-dollar-adjacent bets within days or weeks, the order in which they see the books may be worth as much as the numbers in them. OpenAI would rather set its own price than be priced by comparison.

The accounting fight is a valuation fight

The net-versus-gross revenue dispute sounds arcane. It is not. If OpenAI records revenue net of partner shares and Anthropic records the full contract value sold through cloud providers, then head-to-head revenue comparisons — the very comparisons Anthropic’s IPO disclosures will invite — are structurally rigged against OpenAI unless it gets its numbers and narrative in front of investors first. Watch for this dispute to become one of the defining valuation arguments of the IPO season.

Demand is not the problem; allocation is

Both companies insist investor demand is strong, and the sources do not dispute it. The stated problem is subtler: the same sovereign funds and long-only funds are being courted by both labs, and a dollar committed to OpenAI’s $30 billion round is a dollar unavailable for Anthropic’s debut. This is a land-grab for institutional capital, and the timing — OpenAI’s fundraise running in parallel with Anthropic’s investor day — looks like an attempt to drain the well before the rival arrives.

The market is doing the talking

Do not read this story apart from the CoreWeave scare, the $1.6 trillion wiped from semiconductor valuations, or the pulled IPOs. Investors are asking whether the AI buildout can service its debts. OpenAI’s answer — growth at this pace justifies the capital — must land while the window is open. If IPO markets deteriorate further, as the company’s own investors fear, the $30 billion round is not a luxury; it is insurance against a delayed 2027 listing.

The two-horse race is now four

Edward Best’s “two-horse race” framing captures the capital-markets moment but undersells the technology market. Anthropic and OpenAI are fighting for the same dollars, but Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Muse Wonder are fighting for the same users — Meta released its first frontier model just last week. The capital race may be binary, but the intelligence race is not, and the company that wins the money round still has to win the model rounds that follow.

What to Watch Next

1. The commitment timeline: Whether OpenAI actually secures the $30 billion before Anthropic’s mid-November debut — and at what final valuation. A fast close validates the acceleration thesis; a slow one suggests investors want Anthropic’s numbers first.
2. Anthropic’s investor day fallout: What the lab told its backers about Q3 revenue and 2026 guidance — and whether the $1.5 trillion versus $2 trillion debut debate resolves.
3. The accounting argument: Whether the net-versus-gross revenue question surfaces in Anthropic’s formal IPO disclosures, and how analysts adjust the two labs’ numbers to a common basis.
4. IPO market health: Whether Anthropic’s debut lifts or crushes the postponed listings — AirTrunk, Firmus, SB Energy, Holtec — and what it means for OpenAI’s 2027 plans.
5. CoreWeave and the debt question: Whether scrutiny of the AI buildout’s leverage deepens. The infrastructure bill both labs are racing to fund is the same bill investors are now questioning.

Sources

• Reuters — “OpenAI seeks to accelerate fundraising ahead of Anthropic IPO, sources say” (19 Oct 2026)
• Reuters relaying Bloomberg News — “OpenAI targets $30 billion funding at $1.4 trillion valuation” (29 Sep 2026)
• Reuters — “Investors temper Anthropic IPO valuation expectations over revenue growth” (15 Oct 2026)
• WinBuzzer — “OpenAI Speeds Up Fundraising Before Rival Anthropic’s Upcoming IPO” (20 Oct 2026)