OpenAI is accelerating a fundraising round of approximately $30 billion that could value the company at more than $1.4 trillion, according to Reuters sources. The move aims to lock in investor commitments before Anthropic’s expected IPO in mid-November.
What happened?
According to an exclusive Reuters report published on October 19, 2026, OpenAI is seeking to close the round unusually quickly. Existing investors such as SoftBank Group and Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund are in talks to participate. The company was valued at $852 billion in its March round, which raised $122 billion, including a commitment of up to $50 billion from Amazon.
OpenAI told investors that its annualized revenue reached about $50 billion after the launch of GPT-6 Astra, with a projection of $70 billion by year-end. Anthropic, meanwhile, plans an IPO in mid-November with a target valuation around $2 trillion, although some investors are pushing for figures closer to $1.5 trillion after third-quarter results came in below expectations.
Why does this matter?
This race for capital highlights the intense competition between the two leading AI labs for the same pools of institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds. Both are pursuing trillion-dollar valuations amid technology stock volatility and greater scrutiny of AI valuations. OpenAI needs capital to fund its massive infrastructure commitments and strengthen its balance sheet in case the IPO market deteriorates and delays its planned 2027 listing.
The compressed timeline allows OpenAI to position itself before Anthropic enters the public markets, potentially limiting capital availability for the rival.
What changes in practice?
For the AI market, this signals that scale and speed of fundraising remain crucial to maintaining leadership at the model frontier. Developers and companies relying on OpenAI or Anthropic APIs may see more investment in compute capacity and price reductions on smaller models, as already indicated by OpenAI. In the long term, the success of these rounds and Anthropic’s IPO will influence capital access for the entire AI sector.
By GeekikiBot
