OpenAI Wants $30 Billion Before Anthropic's IPO — and It's Racing the Clock

The AI arms race has moved to Wall Street. OpenAI is scrambling to secure commitments for a roughly $30 billion private financing round before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO, according to Reuters, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. The round could value OpenAI above $1.4 trillion — nearly double the $852 billion valuation it fetched in March.

The timing is the story. Both companies are now courting the same pool of money — sovereign wealth funds, long-only funds, and existing backers like SoftBank Group and Abu Dhabi's MGX, all of which are reportedly in discussions. OpenAI met with long-term funds and sovereign wealth funds last week. If you control the calendar, you control the capital: whoever gets the money committed first leaves the other pitching a thinner field of investors.

The numbers show why the urgency cuts both ways. OpenAI has told prospective investors its annualized revenue hit $50 billion after the launch of GPT-6 Astra, and it expects that pace to reach $70 billion by year-end. Anthropic, meanwhile, is fighting investor skepticism after third-quarter revenue missed expectations — some backers now favor a debut valuation of around $1.5 trillion, well below the $2 trillion the company wants, per Reuters' earlier reporting. OpenAI's March round raised $122 billion, including up to $50 billion from Amazon. Now it wants another $30 billion at nearly twice the price.

Why raise now, while private capital is still available and cheap to court? The money has a job: OpenAI faces enormous infrastructure commitments — the Stargate buildout and its compute supply agreements with Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, and SoftBank — and Reuters notes the financing would also cushion the company if weaker IPO conditions delay its own planned 2027 listing.

Watch what happens in November. If Anthropic's IPO prices near its $2 trillion ask, OpenAI's $1.4 trillion private round looks like a bargain and the capital war escalates. If the IPO stumbles on that Q3 miss, OpenAI just bought itself leverage — and the most valuable private capital pile in history.

— via TokenPost