While the AI industry argues over whether to slow down, capital's enthusiasm for OpenAI shows no sign of cooling. According to the Financial Times, the ChatGPT developer is in early talks with investors about a new funding round — targeting a valuation of roughly $1.2 trillion, about 41% above the $852 billion valuation from its March raise.
People familiar with the matter say the talks are at an early stage and the figure could change in the coming months. Unusually, the round was initiated by investors rather than by OpenAI itself — several major backers approached the company. One source added that whether and when the private raise moves forward will depend on the timeline OpenAI eventually chooses for its listing.
OpenAI's capital story and its safety narrative now exist in subtle tension. In March, OpenAI raised a record $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation, with investors including Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, while Microsoft continued its participation. On September 12, responding to Anthropic's Dario Amodei essay, CEO Sam Altman publicly said OpenAI would not IPO in 2026 because "it would be unwise timing amid growing public concern over AI existential risk." Yet the funding talks continue — proof that even as executives talk about "pacing," OpenAI still needs enormous capital to sustain training and compute. Sources say the company has burned tens of billions of dollars training models in recent years.
Revenue growth gives investors confidence: with GPT-5.6's release, OpenAI's annualized revenue passed $40 billion in July, up 20% month over month. Compared with the $20 billion monthly run rate (about $240 billion annualized) at the time of the March raise, that's nearly double in six months. Forge Global data shows Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI have all crossed the $100 billion-plus valuation threshold; the private-market valuation race is still accelerating.
Notably, this potential round arrives in the most heated week of the AI safety debate — Altman publicly supports "limiting frontier R&D" while being unable to escape "the need for capital." Analysts see this "brakes in rhetoric, accelerator in practice" tension as the truest portrait of the AI industry: no matter how compelling the safety narrative, the inertia of trillion-dollar capital spending won't stop easily. For observers, the $1.2 trillion price tag is a reminder that OpenAI's commercialization is sprinting through private markets, even with its IPO delayed.