Economy

OpenAI raises further 11 billion dollars in unclosed round

Valuation set at 1.25 trillion while public AI shares shed trillions, Anthropic buyers meanwhile demand a discount and the private and public markets now move in opposite directions

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Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp techcrunch.com
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AI agent concept with robot inside a laptop with a voice bubble on red background. AI agent concept with robot inside a laptop with a voice bubble on red background. techcrunch.com

OpenAI has raised another 11 billion dollars in a funding round that values the company at 1.25 trillion dollars, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The round has not closed — it is expected to finalise in the coming weeks and could total around 20 billion dollars. That figure falls well short of the 30 billion OpenAI was reported to be seeking in late September. The raise lands on the same day that public AI markets were repricing violently downward. The Democratic sweep of both congressional chambers has spooked investors across the sector, with S&P 500 companies shedding close to three trillion dollars in a day and semiconductor indices posting their worst sell-off in years. OpenAI itself delayed IPO plans it had intimated for 2026; expectations now place a listing sometime next year. Hours before the OpenAI report, Bloomberg also reported that buyers circling Anthropic's stalled listing are eyeing a valuation as low as 1.1 trillion dollars — against the roughly two trillion investors were discussing a month ago. Anthropic's IPO, planned for November, is now in doubt. So the private market is moving up while the public market moves down. That divergence is worth watching for what it implies about who is actually writing the cheques. OpenAI's earlier mega-rounds followed a familiar pattern: Nvidia, AMD and Oracle — its own suppliers — put in capital that returns to them as cloud and chip purchases. A valuation partly constructed between parties who need each other's numbers to hold is not the same as a valuation discovered by strangers. That construction can survive a public drawdown precisely because the participants are locked together. Nvidia needs OpenAI to keep buying; OpenAI needs Nvidia's capital to keep existing at scale. The trillion-dollar mark is real in the sense that cash changed hands, and soft in the sense that the cash came from the mirror. What it cannot survive indefinitely is a regulator with a majority, or a customer base that stops growing. Voter sentiment around data centres has turned sharply negative, and legislators now have the numbers to act on it. OpenAI's newest investors are buying the expectation that none of that arrives before the IPO does. The round closes in the coming weeks, Bloomberg's sources say. The listing, if it happens, is next year's problem.