OpenAI has closed the first 11 billion dollars of its latest funding round, at a valuation of 1.25 trillion dollars, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters carried the report on Friday evening, November 6. The money has been wired, according to the reporting, but the round itself is not finished, and OpenAI declined to comment.
The close is best read as a first tranche, not a final total. One person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the rest is expected in the coming weeks and could bring the total to as much as 20 billion dollars. That ceiling is a reported expectation, not cash already in hand.
What changed most is the scale of the ambition, more than the price. In late September, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI set out to raise 30 billion dollars or more at a 1.4 trillion dollar valuation. By October 31, the Financial Times reported that the target had been cut by 10 billion dollars, to 20 billion dollars, at the same 1.25 trillion dollar valuation that has now held. The first close landed at that lower size and that lower price.
Even so, the valuation is a clear step up from the last closed round. In March, OpenAI raised 122 billion dollars at an 852 billion dollar valuation, according to Bloomberg. Speaking on CNBC on Friday, chief financial officer Sarah Friar called the 1.25 trillion dollar price almost a 50 percent lift from the March round, said the round is priced before the new money, and said it remains ongoing. She pushed back against suggestions that the company had scaled back its ambitions.
Friar pointed to demand as the reason for raising at all. She told CNBC that OpenAI's business grew 70 percent quarter over quarter in the third quarter, and that enterprise demand doubled over the same period. "It is saying people are actually using AI and getting value from it," she said, in remarks reported by Reuters. Bloomberg-sourced reporting named Coatue Management and T. Rowe Price among the first-close investors, with SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz also in the round. None has publicly confirmed the terms.
The money arrives in a harder week for the industry. Fears that the Democratic midterm sweep could slow data center construction wiped about 2.5 trillion dollars off the United States stock market on Thursday, according to Reuters, and investors are also questioning whether rival Anthropic can hold a valuation discussed at 1.5 trillion dollars in its planned listing. Friar said OpenAI will press ahead with its United States data center expansion despite the sweep. "We are going to keep building out those relationships with communities so we can get the compute we need," she said. On Thursday, OpenAI said it will no longer use nondisclosure agreements with public officials when negotiating future sites, and will give residents access to construction plans.
For readers, the distinction matters. A wired first close at a lower target is still an enormous amount of capital, and it shows that large investors will still fund OpenAI at a higher price than in March. It is not, however, the 30 billion dollar round first described in September, and it lands while voters, markets and a rival listing are testing how much AI spending the public will support. The next test is whether the remaining money, roughly 9 billion dollars toward the reported ceiling, arrives in the coming weeks at the same price.