OpenAI Wants 1.5 Trillion Dollars and No Rush to Go Public

OpenAI is holding early conversations with investors about a new funding round that could value the company at roughly 1.2 trillion dollars, and according to people familiar with the talks, OpenAI itself is pushing for something closer to 1.5 trillion. Either figure would mark a striking jump from where the company stood just six months ago.

From 852 billion to well past a trillion

In March, OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history, raising 122 billion dollars at an 852 billion dollar post money valuation. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar pointed to market volatility and weak performance among recent tech initial public offerings as reasons to stay private rather than list at the time. Half a year later, an offer near 1.2 trillion dollars would represent roughly a 41 percent jump from that March mark, and OpenAI's reported ask of 1.5 trillion would push the increase considerably further.

No rush to go public

Sam Altman addressed the IPO question directly in a Fortune interview on September 12. Given everything happening with safety, he said, right now would be an ill advised moment to go public. He has pointed elsewhere to the possibility that OpenAI might need to make decisions not strictly aligned with shareholder interests, including pausing development of frontier models to allow more time for safety and alignment work, a rationale that also happens to buy the company more room to negotiate its valuation privately before facing the scrutiny that comes with public markets.

The gap with Anthropic keeps shifting

The timing is notable. As recently as early September, OpenAI's implied valuation on the secondary market sat around 908 billion dollars, trailing rival Anthropic's roughly 1.2 to 1.4 trillion dollar figure closely enough that some investors were calling OpenAI the comparative bargain of the two. A primary funding round anywhere near 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars would close that gap, and possibly erase it entirely, undercutting the idea that Anthropic had definitively pulled ahead in investor eyes.

A round of this size also lets OpenAI's earliest investors and employees realize gains on paper without the company subjecting itself to public disclosure requirements or quarterly earnings pressure, all while keeping fresh cash flowing in to cover the enormous computing costs behind training and running its frontier models.

Staying private at a trillion dollar valuation is its own kind of statement. It says a company would rather answer to a handful of investors than to public markets every quarter.

Nothing about the talks is finalized, and the eventual valuation could land anywhere between the 1.2 trillion dollars investors have floated and the 1.5 trillion dollars OpenAI is reportedly seeking. Whatever number the two sides settle on, it will reset the terms of a rivalry with Anthropic that only recently looked like it was tilting decisively in the other direction.