OpenAI nears $30 billion round at $1.25 trillion valuation

OpenAI is moving toward one of the largest private financing packages ever assembled, a round of up to $30 billion that would value the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company at $1.25 trillion, according to people familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details remain confidential. That figure excludes any of the new capital being raised, meaning the implied valuation of the existing business sits even higher once the fresh money is counted.

The capital is being organized around investors from the United Arab Emirates, who are leading the round alongside Coatue, the people said. The financing is being framed as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of a potential initial public offering, a structure that gives the company a fresh war chest while it prepares for a market debut that has been in the works for months. OpenAI kickstarted discussions for the round in September after investors approached the company with proposals, as CNBC previously reported. On Thursday, the company told investors it is aiming to secure signatures by the end of next week, though the final size of the round has not yet been locked down.

Additional reference context is available at https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/22/openai-funding-round-uae-investors.html.

The public market timeline remains fluid. OpenAI confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June but has not disclosed exactly when it plans to debut. Internal signals have been mixed. CFO Sarah Friar told employees in August that the AI lab “will be a public company in 2027,” while CEO Sam Altman said the following month that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.”

Meanwhile, the compute economics behind the raise loom large. Alongside the new investment, OpenAI is negotiating a commercial deal that would secure additional computing capacity from the UAE, according to one person. The company told investors in February that it is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, a figure that underscores why large pools of capital, and large sovereign partners, matter to its operating model.

Competitive dynamics add another layer of urgency. Anthropic, OpenAI’s chief rival, is also gearing up for what is widely expected to be a massive IPO. Anthropic confidentially filed its prospectus with regulators in June and is actively meeting prospective investors, as CNBC previously reported. The company is reportedly seeking a valuation between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in its offering, and in May it closed a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation.

Taken together, the two rival raisings point to an extraordinary flow of private capital into frontier AI ahead of anticipated listings, with sovereign wealth from the Gulf positioned at the center of OpenAI’s latest round. For investors, the open questions are the final size of the round, the terms attached to a $1.25 trillion entry price, and whether the eventual public debuts deliver returns on valuations that already exceed those of most listed companies.