OpenAI Reportedly Raises $11 Billion at a $1.25 Trillion Valuation
OpenAI has pulled in another $11 billion, and the price tag on the company is now $1.25 trillion.
That’s according to Bloomberg, which reported on Friday, November 6, that investors wired the money to OpenAI that same day. Bloomberg’s sources were people familiar with the deal. OpenAI hasn’t confirmed anything publicly, and nobody has said who the investors are.
The $11 billion reportedly isn’t the end of it either. It’s the first slice of a round that could grow to around $20 billion over the next few weeks.
Smaller than OpenAI wanted
The headline numbers are huge, but they’re actually a step down from what OpenAI was going for.
When talks started more than a month ago, the company was reportedly looking for $30 billion or more at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion. Then the AI trade in public markets went through a rough patch. Investors started asking harder questions about how much the industry is spending on data centres, and whether building them might get harder after the US midterm elections.
OpenAI scaled back. It’s still an enormous raise. But it suggests that even the most valuable AI company in the world can’t name its price right now.
The jump since March
Context helps here. Back in March, OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, in a round that included Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and around two dozen other investors.
Going from $852 billion to $1.25 trillion in about eight months is a rise of roughly 47%. Fast by any normal standard. Slower than OpenAI hoped.
Microsoft has backed at least four of OpenAI’s previous rounds, so it’s an obvious candidate to be in this one too. SiliconANGLE flagged it as a likely participant, though again, no investor names have been confirmed.
Can the revenue justify it?
This is where OpenAI’s case gets stronger. The Financial Times reported last month that the company finished the third quarter with $50 billion in annualised revenue, up 77% from a year earlier.
A lot of that is coming from businesses rather than consumers. Enterprise sales more than doubled. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, told the Wall Street Journal this week that growth had slowed in the first half of the year before picking back up after new model launches in June. He also pointed to the company’s workplace and coding tools.
Do the maths and $1.25 trillion works out to about 25 times annualised revenue. That’s a rich multiple. It only makes sense if you believe OpenAI keeps growing very fast for several more years, and plenty of investors clearly do.
Where the money goes
OpenAI spends money at a scale that’s hard to picture. The Information reported in July that the company had more than $665 billion committed to chips and data centres.
That’s what it takes to train frontier models and serve hundreds of millions of people every week.
OpenAI has been trying to bring those costs down over time, including by building its own custom inference chip with Broadcom. In the meantime, it needs a steady stream of capital.
This round helps bridge the gap to an IPO. OpenAI is aiming to go public in 2027, having pushed back earlier plans to list.
Anthropic is watching (and vice versa)
The timing is interesting. Anthropic, OpenAI’s closest rival, is getting ready for its own IPO and is reportedly expected to list before Thanksgiving.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic is hoping for a valuation of around $1.5 trillion. Not everyone’s convinced. Several investors reportedly think that’s too high, and one shareholder suggested something closer to $1 trillion.
So depending on how Anthropic’s shares price, OpenAI’s new valuation could put it ahead of its rival or slightly behind. Either way, Anthropic’s debut will be the first real test of how public markets value a frontier AI lab. OpenAI’s bankers will be paying close attention ahead of 2027.
What it tells us about the AI market
You can read this round two ways.
The optimistic view: investors just put $11 billion into a single company at a trillion-dollar-plus valuation, at a moment when AI stocks were wobbling. Confidence in OpenAI is clearly still there.
The more cautious view: OpenAI wanted more money at a higher price and didn’t get it. If the sector leader is facing pushback on valuation, smaller AI startups should probably expect tougher conversations with investors too, especially around revenue and how much they plan to spend.
Both are probably true at once.
What happens next
The obvious question is whether OpenAI confirms the deal and names the investors. After that, it’s whether the round actually reaches the reported $20 billion in the coming weeks.
Then there’s Anthropic’s IPO, which could reset expectations for the whole sector within the month. And behind all of it sits OpenAI’s $665 billion-plus in infrastructure commitments, which won’t pay for themselves.
We’ll update this story if OpenAI confirms the details.
Key facts
Company: OpenAI
Amount reported: $11 billion (first tranche)
Potential total: about $20 billion
Valuation: $1.25 trillion
Investors: not disclosed
Reported: November 6, 2026, by Bloomberg News
Status: not confirmed by OpenAI
Previous round: $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation (March 2026)
IPO plan: 2027
Sources: Reuters via TradingView, Investing.com, SiliconANGLE