OpenAI Nears Up to $30 Billion Round at $1.25 Trillion Valuation With UAE Investors Leading, People Familiar Say

Since OpenAI began pitching a roughly $30 billion raise at about $1.4 trillion earlier this month, with no lead investor lined up, the terms have shifted. People familiar with the deal say the round is now led by investors from the United Arab Emirates alongside Coatue, at a $1.25 trillion valuation.

That valuation does not include the new capital, according to those people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential. The final size of the round is still being determined, and the amount is described as "up to" $30 billion.

OpenAI told investors Thursday that it aims to secure signatures by the end of next week, the people said.

What changed

Two things are different from where the story stood a few days ago. A lead now exists, and the headline valuation is lower than the $1.4 trillion that had been reported.

The people familiar with the deal did not say why the number moved. OpenAI had presented investors with a fixed $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation, an unusual approach for a venture deal, while it had yet to name a lead.

Bloomberg reported on Oct. 5 that several UAE firms, including Abu Dhabi-based MGX, were discussing a consortium that could invest as much as $10 billion. BlackRock was also in talks to invest alongside the group. The University of California endowment, Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz were reported to be considering participation. Reuters reported that SoftBank and other existing backers were also in talks.

OpenAI and BlackRock declined to comment on the Bloomberg report. MGX did not respond.

A compute deal on the side

OpenAI is also negotiating a commercial arrangement that would secure more computing capacity from the UAE, according to one person familiar with the talks. The financing is being positioned as an "opportunistic" bridge ahead of a potential IPO, the people said.

CFO Sarah Friar has told employees that an OpenAI listing will likely come in 2027. OpenAI has filed confidentially to go public.

The Anthropic clock

The timing is tied to Anthropic, whose IPO is expected in mid-November. Reuters reported that OpenAI wants to close before Anthropic's financial disclosures invite side-by-side comparisons. Both companies are courting the same sovereign wealth and institutional money.

"OpenAI could want to set its own valuation and not have to worry about a comp," Edward Best, co-chair of capital markets at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, told Reuters. Best has no role in the deal and was speaking hypothetically. "It's really a two-horse race in terms of being public," he said.

OpenAI has told investors its annualized revenue hit $50 billion after the launch of its GPT-6 Astra model and that it projects $70 billion by the end of 2026, according to Reuters. Annualized means current activity extrapolated over a year, not sales already booked.

Anthropic told investors its third-quarter revenue rose to $16.8 billion from $11.6 billion in the second quarter, Reuters reported. Some current and prospective Anthropic investors have pushed for a listing valuation near $1.5 trillion rather than the $2 trillion the company wants, after those results missed expectations, per Reuters.

A dispute over how revenue is counted

The two companies do not count revenue the same way. OpenAI books revenue after deducting partner shares. It has argued that Anthropic overstates its revenue by recording the full value of contracts sold through third-party cloud providers.

Anthropic has told Reuters that its bookkeeping follows widely accepted methods. The disclosures in Anthropic's IPO filing could put Friar under pressure to explain OpenAI's revenue growth and outlook in more detail, according to Reuters.

The market backdrop

The raise comes during a choppy stretch for tech. There have been jitters around CoreWeave, and investors are asking about financing conditions as interest rates rise. Anthropic's listing is expected to test investor appetite for the whole sector.

Several questions remain unresolved. Will signatures arrive by the end of next week, and will the valuation hold at $1.25 trillion before the Anthropic books go public in mid-November? The final round size and the terms of the UAE compute agreement are also still undecided.