OpenAI seeks up to $30 billion as it lowers its valuation target

Funding before a possible listing

CNBC reported that the round is being considered as interim financing ahead of a possible IPO. The valuation OpenAI is willing to accept is not specified in the report, so the headline figure alone does not show how much the company’s expectations have shifted.

OpenAI’s public-market plans have sent mixed signals. In June, it confidentially filed an IPO prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In August, CFO Sarah Friar told employees the company would be public by 2027. But CEO Sam Altman said in September that the timing was not right; he had also told the company internally in June that it was not ready.

Anthropic is also preparing for an IPO and is targeting a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. That figure offers a striking comparison, but it is not a like-for-like measure of either company’s current valuation or fundraising terms.

The value of the deal is in the compute

The UAE talks may matter as much as the cash. The reported commercial agreement would bring OpenAI additional computing capacity, making the proposed package about access to infrastructure as well as capital.

I think the central uncertainty is what OpenAI is trading for that capacity, and on what terms. The source gives no details of the commercial deal, while the public-market timeline remains unsettled. That leaves the $30 billion round looking less like a clear step toward an IPO than a way to buy time and computing power while OpenAI decides when public markets make sense.