OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday — a raise that would serve as a bridge to a public listing now expected in 2027 rather than this year.
The company's previous private round, in March, brought in $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation and was described at the time as its last before going public. Investors have since had reasons to stay interested: according to TechCrunch, a strategic refocus on areas such as coding has helped lift OpenAI's run-rate revenue by about 70% since July, to roughly $40 billion in August.
Chief executive Sam Altman has ruled out an IPO in 2026, saying he wants to prioritise AI safety first. "I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade," he recently told Fortune, responding to warnings from safety researchers that advanced AI poses an existential risk to humanity.
The reported round is the latest in a sequence of enormous private valuations across the sector: Anthropic is preparing a listing of its own, and OpenAI's last employee share buyback in August valued the company at $852 billion. If the new round closes anywhere near the reported terms, it would make OpenAI the most valuable private company in history.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. Bloomberg's report, cited by TechCrunch, described the new raise as a bridge round ahead of the delayed IPO.
