OpenAI Aims to Lock In $30 Billion Funding Round by Next Week
OpenAI is close to finishing a new funding deal that could bring in as much as $30 billion from investors. The deal would value the company at $1.25 trillion before adding the new money. CNBC reported this on Thursday (Oct. 22), based on information from sources who were not named.
According to the report, OpenAI told investors on Thursday that it hopes to get the deal signed by the end of next week. However, the company has not yet decided exactly how much money it will raise.
OpenAI began talking about this funding round after investors approached the company in December. According to the report, OpenAI has described the deal as a chance to raise extra money before a possible initial public offering (IPO), when a company first sells shares to the public.
OpenAI did not immediately respond when PYMNTS asked for a comment.
Reuters reported on Monday (Oct. 19) that OpenAI was moving quickly to secure investors before its biggest competitor, Anthropic, starts selling shares to the public next month.
Reuters described OpenAI's fundraising as happening unusually quickly. The effort could raise about $30 billion and increase the company's value to more than $1.4 trillion.
Two people who knew about the situation told Reuters that OpenAI was moving so quickly because it wanted to get ahead of Anthropic. Both companies are increasingly trying to attract money from the same investors.
The Financial Times reported on Oct. 14 that Anthropic had been catching up with OpenAI in revenue, which is the money a company brings in from its business, before Anthropic's planned IPO.
Anthropic's revenue rose from $4.8 billion in the first quarter of the year to $11.6 billion in the second quarter and $16.8 billion in the third quarter. In each of these quarters, the company brought in more revenue than it did during all of 2025.
Meanwhile, OpenAI told investors that its annualized revenue was getting close to $50 billion at the end of September. Annualized revenue is an estimate of how much money a company would bring in over a full year if it kept earning money at its current rate. That figure was about $20 billion less than the $70 billion that had been expected, according to a Financial Times report published on Oct. 8.
Yahoo Finance reported on Wednesday (Oct. 21), based on unnamed sources, that Anthropic could make its IPO documents available to the public as early as Friday (Oct. 23). This would bring Anthropic closer to what could become the biggest stock market debut in history.
If Anthropic makes these documents public, it could begin selling its shares on the stock market in November. The documents would also let ordinary investors see details about Anthropic's finances and the risks involved in investing in the company for the first time.
Anthropic's planned stock market debut is expected to be bigger than SpaceX's IPO in June. Yahoo Finance reported that many people see Anthropic's IPO as an important test of how interested investors still are in putting money into the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry.