OpenAI will 30 Milliarden Dollar einsammeln, Bewertung über 1,4 Billionen

OpenAI is accelerating a private funding round of roughly 30 billion dollars at a valuation that could exceed 1.4 trillion dollars, according to a Reuters exclusive, deliberately racing to lock in investor commitments before rival Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO. SoftBank Group, Abu Dhabi's MGX and other existing backers are in talks to participate in the round, which is moving at an unusually fast pace for a raise of this size.

Why the rush: two labs chasing the same money The funding sprint is driven by a simple competitive logic: OpenAI and Anthropic are courting an almost identical pool of long-horizon funds and sovereign wealth funds. OpenAI held meetings with growth funds and sovereign investors last week, at the same time Anthropic was running its own investor roadshow ahead of a listing that could value it between 1.5 and 2 trillion dollars.

People familiar with the matter say OpenAI wants to complete the round before Anthropic's IPO prospectus gives investors a fuller picture of its rival's finances, avoiding a direct side-by-side comparison. "OpenAI may want to set its own valuation without having to worry about a comparable company," said Edward Best, co-chair of the capital markets practice at law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, commenting hypothetically.

The numbers behind the race OpenAI is telling investors that growth accelerated after the launch of GPT-6 Astra, with annualized revenue reaching 50 billion dollars and projected to hit 70 billion dollars by year-end. The company also cut prices on its lower-cost models, which it says drove usage growth, and signaled there is room for further price reductions.

Anthropic, for its part, reported quarterly revenue jumping from 11.6 billion dollars in Q2 to 16.8 billion dollars in Q3, with annualized revenue around 65 billion dollars as of July. However, a Wall Street Journal review of its draft IPO prospectus showed a first-half net loss of more than 80 billion dollars — 72 billion of it from accounting charges tied to convertible notes and other financing instruments — plus over 518 billion dollars in committed compute spending over the next decade.

What it means for the market The round also functions as balance-sheet insurance: OpenAI needs capital to fund vast infrastructure commitments and to protect its planned 2027 IPO against any deterioration in public market conditions. On prediction market Polymarket, the implied odds of OpenAI reaching a 1.25 trillion dollar valuation by December 31 jumped 20 percentage points to 85 percent after the report.

Not everyone is comfortable. SoftBank's credit default swaps spiked 12 basis points overnight to 432, a four-year high, as bond markets digest the Japanese group's expanding AI exposure. CDS spreads for Meta and Nvidia have also hit records, reflecting Wall Street's growing anxiety about the sustainability of the AI capex boom.

Sources: Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Lianhe Zaobao, Wallstreetcn, 36Kr, threerouter