OpenAI raises $11B at a $1.25T valuation

xfour

How many companies have a public market valuation over 1T, that seems like a lot

enraged_camel

The story here is that Sam wanted to raise a lot more, but could not. Investors almost certainly want to see how the Anthropic IPO plays out before deciding whether to keep showering these companies with money.

naveen99

This valuation is a function of early accumulation of compute. They could rent it to Anthropic, or poach more Anthropic engineers.

124512310X

They wanted to raise 20 billion "from family offices and high net-worth individuals", i.e., fleece the Saudis again but failed: https://www.wheresyoured.at/running-dry/ They got a bit of pocket change at this insane valuation.

odyssey7

I think OpenAI is one of the most important companies in a generation, but on a tangent, I remember the first time a company broke a $1T market cap, and it was a significant moment. Nowadays multi-trillion-dollar valuations are becoming more common — I wonder how much it reflects inflation vs companies being genuinely bigger than they used to be. If it’s more about inflation, then we can expect to see dozens and hundreds more in the coming decades. Founders: recalibrate your ambition for the new era.

cmiles8

The real headline is that they couldn’t hit what they wanted in terms of valuation and funds raised. Just were not enough people willing to invest given concerns that it may be downhill from here for a while on AI. This will also make it even harder to avoid any future IPO being a down round. They’re almost certainly worth much less than Anthropic and Anthropic is, per reports, struggling to keep its valuation much above 1T, and even that may fall through.

xnx

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Nvidia, Grok: they can't all be worth $1T (or $1T additional in Google's case) at the same time.

chris_va

We always see these headlines and think "is XYZ company actually worth that much?" Class A stock gets paid out first, so "valuation" here is not what a retail investor would necessarily pay for class C. Basically, do these people think that they'll get their $11B back? If so, they are ok with a high "valuation" because there is little risk. And with OpenAI's corporate structure, who knows what is actually happening.

satvikpendem

Valuation dropped, that's the real news. Altman couldn't raise the amount he wanted to so it's gonna just be a dumping ground in the public markets.

bob1029

OpenAI seems to me like they are operating with a slightly longer horizon strategy than Anthropic. Going for the IPO is the last resort in my mind. It is what you do to get ahead of deteriorating financial conditions. I don't think Anthropic had a choice at their projected burn rate. Why would we surrender all our cloaks and daggers unless we absolutely have to? The political and regulatory headwinds are not looking favorable for AI companies as of a few days ago. Going for the IPO collapses a large space of options that are available to the business. The AI business is entirely about data. Anthropic's IPO would generate an incredible amount of data that could be used by its competitors to refine their strategy. Knowing where to allocate capital is perhaps worth more than the capital itself at these scales.

an0malous

Called it months ago when they released Luna etc. and started subsidizing prices even more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117798 > I bet they’ll announce new fundraising soon. Someone gave them a top up to try and corner the market. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012065 > > As OpenAI bides its time, the company is engaging in early stage discussions with investors about a potential new funding round. The company could raise around $30 billion, CNBC previously reported, but that figure could change. > I predicted last month when they launched Luna that they had raised more funding and I suspect this tidbit dropped to CNBC is just prepping the public for a fundraising that’s already happened. There will probably be an announcement this month.

ViktorRay

When this bubble pops the retail investors who are holding the bag are going to suffer so much unfortunately Wikipedia article on who suffers the most when speculative bubbles pop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

KevinMS

Is that even enough to keep the lights on?

martincsweiss

That's a lot of money.

paxy

> SoftBank and Abu Dhabi’s MGX took part in the round Why is it always SoftBank?

sneak

Billion dollar valuation startups used to be called unicorns because they were mythical creatures that didn’t exist. Now we have a trillion dollar startup, still raising money, implying that the status quo isn’t remotely their final form. I understand AI is actually, no-bullshit, changing the world forever, including the global economy. That said, how much of this order of magnitude jump since “unicorn” got coined can be directly attributed to USD inflation?

rcr-anti

It kinda seems like a lot of the maximalist plans required the rest of the world standing still. As opposed to other governments, companies, other people generally adapting and trying to get a piece for themselves.

GodelNumbering

There was an unconfirmed report that upto $10 billion in this round were pledged by a syndicate of UAE investment funds, including MGX https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-05/openai-in...

nomilk

The 'T' in that number is breathtaking. Amusing flashback: remember about a year ago various tech publications claimed OpenAI was destined for bankruptcy since they were bleeding cash. Even funnier, people believed that.

vb-8448

I'm still astonished on how musk outplayed everyone with the spacex ipo.