OpenAI is racing to raise about $30 billion at a valuation exceeding $1.4 trillion, a round that would rank among the largest private financings in technology history and reinforce the ChatGPT maker’s standing as the world’s most valuable private company. The raise is being arranged ahead of rival Anthropic’s expected mid-November initial public offering, according to Reuters, setting up a high-stakes contest between the two leading artificial intelligence laboratories for capital, talent and investor attention. SoftBank and Abu Dhabi’s MGX are in talks to join the round, the report said.
A successful close at the reported valuation would put OpenAI in a league of its own in private markets. At more than $1.4 trillion, the company would be worth several times the value of the most richly valued private firms ever recorded, and its market worth would exceed that of most publicly traded companies. The round’s size reflects both the enormous capital appetite of frontier AI research and the intense investor enthusiasm for a company whose products have become central to how businesses and consumers use artificial intelligence.
A fundraising race timed against Anthropic’s IPO
The timing of the raise is no coincidence. Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude family of models and OpenAI’s most direct competitor in foundation models, is expected to go public in mid-November, a listing that would crystallise a public market valuation for a frontier AI lab for the first time. By securing a fresh $30 billion before that event, OpenAI would set its own private benchmark and ensure it remains the larger, better-capitalised player in the narrative that investors, employees and enterprise customers follow.
The two companies compete across model capability, enterprise adoption and the recruitment of specialised researchers. A public listing would give Anthropic employees liquid shares and put a public price on frontier-model technology. OpenAI’s answer is to raise an amount few companies in any sector could contemplate, signalling that its ambitions and resources remain unmatched.
Reuters reported that the round is being put together quickly, with OpenAI moving to lock in commitments before the IPO window focuses attention elsewhere. The speed of the process underscores how competitive capital formation has become in artificial intelligence, where access to computing infrastructure and research talent depends on balance-sheet strength as much as on technical achievement.
SoftBank and MGX in talks to join
Among the investors reported to be in talks are SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate led by Masayoshi Son that has become one of the most aggressive backers of artificial intelligence, and MGX, the Abu Dhabi-based investment vehicle created to channel the emirate’s sovereign wealth into AI and advanced technology. The participation of both would give the round a distinctly global character, pairing Japanese technology capital with Gulf sovereign money.
SoftBank has deepened its involvement with OpenAI in recent years as part of a broader strategy to position itself at the centre of the AI boom, while MGX has emerged as a vehicle for the United Arab Emirates’ ambitions to become a significant player in the global AI infrastructure build-out. Their reported interest in the round signals that the world’s largest pools of capital view leading AI labs as strategic assets worth backing at unprecedented valuations.
Large sovereign and corporate investors have become central to AI fundraising because the sums now exceed what traditional venture capital can supply alone. Training frontier models demands data centres, chips and energy infrastructure costing tens of billions, making sovereign wealth funds and cash-rich conglomerates natural partners for OpenAI.
What the round would mean for the AI industry
If completed, the round would reset expectations for frontier AI valuations and widen the gap between the leading labs and the rest of the field, concentrating resources, talent and computing power in a handful of organisations. That concentration has already raised questions among policymakers about market power in a technology becoming foundational to the economy.
The round would also sharpen the rivalry with Anthropic as its IPO approaches. A successful public listing would validate the sector in public markets and could open the door for other AI companies to follow, while OpenAI’s private raise would demonstrate that the largest sums in technology are still being assembled outside public view. Together, the two events would mark a new phase in the commercialisation of artificial intelligence, in which the leading labs operate at a financial scale once reserved for the world’s largest public companies.
For now, the deal is not yet closed, and the terms reported by Reuters could change as negotiations proceed. But the direction of travel is clear: the competition to build the most capable AI systems is also a competition for capital on a scale the technology industry has never seen, and OpenAI intends to win it.