OpenAI reportedly races to close $30bn round before Anthropic’s IPO

OpenAI is trying to speed up a funding round worth about $30bn so it can get investors to commit money before Anthropic sells shares to the public in mid-November. The deal could value the company behind ChatGPT at more than $1.4 trillion.

Reuters reported the plan on Monday, based on information from two people who know about the matter. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment to Reuters. Anthropic and MGX did not respond right away.

The talks follow a $1.4tn funding round first reported in early October. OpenAI was last valued at $852bn in March, after raising money in a $122bn round that included up to $50bn from Amazon.

Reuters reported that SoftBank Group and MGX, an investment firm based in Abu Dhabi, are discussing joining the round. Both already invest in OpenAI. OpenAI also met with investment funds that mainly hold shares for the long term and government-owned investment funds last week. At the same time, Anthropic held its own event for investors.

Both companies are trying to attract many of the same investors. Because of this, some investors believe OpenAI is trying to secure their money before they can put it into Anthropic’s stock market listing, Reuters reported.

The companies are also competing over their revenue figures. One person said OpenAI reported that its yearly revenue rate reached $50bn after it launched its GPT-6 Astra model. The company expects that figure to reach $70bn by the end of the year. Earlier Reuters reporting estimated that Anthropic’s yearly revenue rate would reach about $65bn by July.

However, the two companies calculate revenue in different ways. OpenAI counts sales after taking away the share kept by its partners. It has accused Anthropic of making its revenue look bigger by counting the full value of contracts sold through cloud service providers. Anthropic previously told Reuters that it follows standard accounting rules.

Anthropic is also facing pressure over how much its company is worth. The company told investors that its revenue in the third quarter rose to $16.8bn, up from $11.6bn in the second quarter. After the results came in below expectations, some investors argued that Anthropic should be valued at about $1.5tn when it first sells shares to the public, rather than the $2tn valuation it wants, Reuters reported last week.

“It’s really a two-horse race in terms of being public,” Edward Best, a lawyer who works on capital markets at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, told Reuters.

OpenAI is also planning to sell shares to the public in 2027. According to Reuters, the new funding would help the company pay for its infrastructure commitments and put it in a stronger financial position if a weaker stock market delays its planned listing.