OpenAI banks $11 billion as its valuation target shrinks
OpenAI has closed the first $11 billion of a new funding round that values the company at $1.25 trillion. Bloomberg reported on Friday, November 6, that the money had already been wired to the company, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters confirmed the figure the same day through a source with knowledge of the deal.
The close is only the first step in a larger plan. Bloomberg reported that the round could grow to as much as $20 billion once the remainder completes in the coming weeks. OpenAI had originally set out to raise $30 billion or more.
The valuation still ranks among the highest ever attached to a private company. It also sits well below what OpenAI wanted when the process began this autumn. That gap, not the headline number, is what investors and rivals will be watching as the round completes.
The timing is tight. OpenAI has been raising private money at breakneck speed while pushing back the date it will face public shareholders. Each new round is now read as a referendum on whether AI spending can justify the bills accruing behind it. The discount on this close suggests the referendum returned a split verdict.
How much did OpenAI raise, and at what valuation?
Bloomberg reported that roughly $11 billion reached OpenAI's accounts as of Friday. The outlet cited people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not public. The figure covers only the initial close of a round OpenAI has been negotiating for more than a month.
Reuters reported that SoftBank and MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based investor and existing OpenAI backer, participated in the first close. Its sourcing came from two investors, and OpenAI declined to comment on the funding. The Wall Street Journal had reported parts of the deal earlier. It described a “tepid” response from some large investors. Both firms were already in OpenAI’s investor base before this close, according to Reuters’ October reporting.
The starting points differed slightly between the two wire reports. Bloomberg said OpenAI initially sought $30 billion or more at a $1.4 trillion valuation. The two investors cited by Reuters said the price had come down from the $1.5 trillion level the company initially sought. Both accounts agree on the direction of travel: the round got smaller and cheaper.
A $1.25 trillion paper valuation places OpenAI in territory almost no private company has occupied. It remains, for now, a number set in a negotiation rather than tested in a market. The first public test will come when the company eventually files to sell shares.
The shape of the close is unusual for a company of this size. Most venture rounds are announced once, at the end. OpenAI instead split the round, wiring the first $11 billion while leaving the rest open. That structure lets the company bank certainty now and test investor appetite for the remainder as market conditions settle.
Why did OpenAI lower its funding target?
The shortfall reflects a market that cooled quickly. Reuters reported that sentiment toward AI companies has eased in the last month. Bloomberg pointed to a public-market rout for the AI sector as the immediate backdrop. OpenAI began the process in late September, when Bloomberg first reported it was looking to raise $30 billion.
Politics sharpened the turn. TechCrunch noted that the Democratic landslide in the November midterms has produced market jitters. Voter sentiment around data centers was overwhelmingly negative. Bloomberg made the same connection, flagging the potential for new roadblocks to data center construction after the election.
There are also early signals that the demand picture is softer than it looks. A Ramp analysis published by TechCrunch found token spending grew just 1.5 percent across August and September. That followed 42 percent growth in July. Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian told TechCrunch, "Almost the entire spend on AI is from venture-backed, high-growth tech companies."
The Ramp data contains more uncomfortable detail. Kharazian said the top 1 percent of AI-spending firms stuttered in August and September. They fell just below the $10,000 per employee they hit at summer peaks. Median firms spend $12 to $15 per employee per month, while the top 10 percent spend $600 to $1,000. A slowdown among the heaviest users, he warned, is sufficient to slow revenue entirely even when usage volumes keep rising.
That concentration matters for a company that once marketed its round to ordinary savers. If the heaviest AI customers slow their budgets, revenue bends with them. Ramp did record a re-acceleration in October, with token spend up 8.9 percent between late September and late October. Even so, the wobble was enough to reset expectations for both OpenAI and Anthropic.
The Financial Times reported in late October that OpenAI had cut its target to $20 billion. A first close was expected to land even lower. The FT also reported that the round would be led by a group of investors from the United Arab Emirates. A follow-on offering for wealthy individuals could carry the total toward $20 billion, according to the FT's reporting summarized by TechCrunch.
The sprint began earlier than most people noticed. In October, Reuters reported that OpenAI was seeking to accelerate its fundraising ahead of Anthropic’s IPO. The early plan called for at least $30 billion at a valuation above $1.4 trillion, with SoftBank, MGX and other existing backers in talks to join. Two months of market turbulence later, only part of that plan survived.
How does this round compare with OpenAI's March 2026 raise?
The March round remains the largest in the company's history. OpenAI announced on March 31, 2026, that it had closed $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. The figure was up from the $110 billion of commitments the company had publicized in February. In its announcement, OpenAI said the funding "gives us the resources to continue to lead at the scale this moment demands."
Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank anchored that financing, according to CNBC. Amazon agreed to invest up to $50 billion, Nvidia committed $30 billion, and SoftBank put in $30 billion. SoftBank co-led the round alongside Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw Ventures, and OpenAI said Microsoft continued to participate.
March was also when OpenAI first opened its financing to individual investors through bank channels, collecting about $3 billion that way. The company reported $2 billion in monthly revenue at the time, against $13.1 billion for all of 2025. It was not yet profitable. CNBC reported that ChatGPT counted more than 900 million weekly active users, including over 50 million paying subscribers.
The trajectory between the two rounds is striking. The valuation has climbed roughly 47 percent in seven months, from $852 billion to $1.25 trillion. Yet the new money is a fraction of March's total. Both the size and the price of the round were cut before the first close. Momentum in capital raising has clearly not kept pace with momentum in valuation.
The language around each round also differs in a way that matters. March was framed as closed committed capital, with OpenAI naming its anchors and totals. The November close has been described by Bloomberg and Reuters through unnamed sources, with the company itself silent. Committed capital is a pledge; wired cash is a fact. This week OpenAI banked the fact and left the rest of the pledge in progress.
Is OpenAI still planning an IPO?
Bloomberg reported that OpenAI has been in talks for more than a month after delaying its initial public offering. TechCrunch noted that the company had previously indicated it hoped to go public this year. Expectations have since shifted to a listing sometime next year.
President Greg Brockman addressed the timing at a Wall Street Journal conference on November 4. Asked whether OpenAI would be IPO-ready in 2027, he replied, "I think so. Yes." He added that the company wants to go public "when we feel is the right time for us."
Brockman argued that the business is strengthening beneath the optics. He said annualized revenue grew 70 percent in the third quarter, driven largely by an enterprise business that doubled. He also conceded that the first two quarters of 2026 had been, in his words, "pretty rough." He said OpenAI "wasn't even in the conversation" in agentic coding earlier in the year. On the coding agent Codex, he said, "We had Codex, but no one was talking about it." A listing would also let early employees and investors sell shares into a market rather than into private negotiations.
The delay is itself a signal. A company that raised $122 billion in March could plausibly have tested the public markets on that momentum. Instead it postponed the listing, watched the autumn sell-off, and returned to private investors at a price it could defend. The first close, at a lower valuation, is the cost of that caution.
The public markets will not judge OpenAI in isolation. Anthropic, its closest rival, is preparing its own listing, and the price talk has slid. Reuters reported that some investors now value Anthropic's planned IPO at about $1.5 trillion, below earlier expectations of roughly $2 trillion. TechCrunch, citing Bloomberg, reported that some potential buyers see the figure as low as $1.1 trillion.
What does the smaller round say about AI spending?
Bloomberg described the reduced goals as “a stark shift for a fundraising juggernaut that helped usher in the current AI boom.” The concerns it cited were specific. Bloomberg pointed to the spending spree on physical infrastructure for artificial intelligence. It also flagged possible new roadblocks to data center construction after the US midterm elections.
OpenAI's own March announcement explains why the money disappears so quickly. The company described durable access to compute as a strategic advantage. Its infrastructure map spans cloud deals with Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave and Google Cloud. Its chip work runs from Nvidia and AMD to Cerebras and a custom design developed with Broadcom, according to the March release.
The release also said enterprise customers accounted for more than 40 percent of revenue in March. It projected parity between enterprise and consumer revenue by the end of 2026. That mix sits at the center of the funding question. Ramp's data suggests the heaviest buyers are concentrated in one sector, which makes the revenue base narrower than the user numbers imply.
None of this means demand has collapsed. ChatGPT usage keeps growing, October token spending re-accelerated, and Brockman pointed to accelerating enterprise revenue. The issue is the distance between OpenAI's costs and its income. The company generated $2 billion a month in revenue as of March against a $122 billion raise and a multi-cloud infrastructure bill. Outside capital still sets the pace, and when investors hesitate, the schedule slips.
There is also a competitive dimension that Brockman himself drew. He told the WSJ conference that Anthropic had already made inroads in the enterprise market. OpenAI spent early 2026 catching up in that area. If enterprise buyers spread their budgets across rivals, the revenue concentration that worries Ramp's economists gets worse for everyone in the market. A smaller round means less margin for error in that fight.
What should investors and AI watchers look for next?
The remainder of the round is the nearest checkpoint. If the total reaches the reported $20 billion target, OpenAI will collect roughly $9 billion more in the coming weeks. Bloomberg's sources expect completion shortly, and the wiring of the first $11 billion suggests the process has real momentum.
The composition of the rest matters as much as the size. The FT reported that UAE investors lead the round and that a follow-on offering for wealthy individuals could complete it. Strong demand from individuals would echo March's bank-channel success and suggest retail appetite survived the autumn rout.
Anthropic's IPO will serve as the public price check. If it lands near the lower end of current talk, private valuations across the sector face pressure, including OpenAI's $1.25 trillion. If it prices strongly, the discount narrative could fade within weeks.
OpenAI's own disclosures will carry the most weight. Brockman's 2027 timeline gives the company about a year to convert a paper valuation into public-market demand. Monthly revenue, enterprise growth rates and the pace of data center commitments will decide whether that window stays open.
It is worth holding a final caution. Every headline figure in this round, from the $11 billion to the $1.25 trillion valuation, comes from unnamed sources. OpenAI has declined to comment, and no regulatory filing has surfaced. The numbers could still shift before the round formally completes. The FT's reporting that a retail-style tranche is still to come leaves room for movement. The total and the price could shift again before any public filing.