OpenAI Eyes $1.2 Trillion Pre-IPO Round

The most valuable private company in history may be about to lap its own record. OpenAI has held early-stage discussions with large investors about a fresh funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at more than $1.2 trillion — ahead of an initial public offering now expected next year — the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, with the Wall Street Journal confirming the talks on Wednesday. If it happens, the raise would dwarf every private financing ever completed and set the stage for one of the largest public listings the market has ever seen.

The number is difficult to absorb on first contact. One-point-two trillion dollars would make a private OpenAI worth more than most public companies on earth — and it would arrive barely six months after the company's last round, a $122 billion financing in March that valued it at $852 billion, with Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank among the backers, according to the Journal. The talks were initiated by investors rather than the company, the FT reported, and remain at an early stage; the figure could still move in either direction over the coming months. OpenAI declined to comment.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The company is in early talks for a funding round that could value it above $1.2 trillion ahead of an IPO expected next year. (Photo: Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.)

What the FT and the Journal are reporting

The Financial Times broke the story on September 15, citing people familiar with the matter: OpenAI has recently discussed a fresh capital raise with large investors that would lift its valuation to about $1.2 trillion before it goes public. The conversations are preliminary, and no terms have been set. What makes the report notable is who started it — the FT says the outreach came from the investor side, a sign that demand for OpenAI exposure is outrunning the company's own fundraising timetable.

The Wall Street Journal added fresh detail on Wednesday, reporting that the round, if completed, would precede the company's highly anticipated IPO, now expected next year. A new raise would give longtime backers a chance to increase their exposure before the listing, the FT noted — and, crucially, it would buy OpenAI optionality. Additional funding could let the company delay its IPO by one or two quarters, one person familiar with the matter said, while the proceeds could also bankroll further acquisitions. OpenAI has already spent billions buying startups, including io, the AI device company founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, and Astral, which builds developer tools for Python.

There is also a defensive logic at work. The FT reported that OpenAI is weighing legal restrictions on what information it can share with private-market investors ahead of an IPO — the kind of discipline a company adopts when the public-market clock is genuinely ticking.

The numbers behind the valuation

Skeptics will ask what justifies a 40% jump in valuation in six months. The Journal's reporting offers the bull case in unusual detail. Since the March round, OpenAI says it has passed one billion active users, with more than 200 million businesses using its models. Growth of Codex, its AI coding tool, has been strong. And the company recently released a new model, Astra, which it described as the world's most intelligent and aligned model — a claim that, if validated by independent benchmarks, would reset the frontier race.

The financials are moving, too. OpenAI's revenue rose to $6.7 billion in the three months ended in June, up from $5.7 billion in the first quarter, the Journal reported. That is a roughly $27 billion annualized run rate, growing at a pace few companies of any size can match. The caveat, and it is a significant one, is that the operating margin fell, pushing the prospect of profitability further out ahead of an IPO. OpenAI is spending at a historic clip — on compute, on talent, on data centers — and the losses are the price of the land grab.

Competition is the other shadow over the numbers. The Journal notes that OpenAI faces new pressure from a crop of lower-cost Chinese open-weight models, which are compressing the pricing power that once let the frontier labs charge a premium for intelligence. Scale is OpenAI's answer: a trillion-dollar valuation is not a bet on today's margins but on the company that ends up owning the platform layer of the AI economy.

OpenAI is not the only lab raising at nosebleed prices — Profound's $1.8B raise shows the same funding frenzy further down the stack.

Sam Altman (left) with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son in Tokyo in February 2025. SoftBank was among the backers of OpenAI's $122 billion March financing. (Photo: Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.)

OpenAI's valuation sprint: from $300B to $1.2T in a year

The sprint, in four numbers, shows how fast the repricing has run: about $300 billion in early 2025, $500 billion by late 2025, $852 billion in the March round, and now $1.2 trillion in talks — a roughly 40% jump in six months on the Journal's math. No private company has ever commanded a figure like the one now being discussed, and the speed of the climb is itself part of the story: each round has repriced OpenAI before the previous round's logic had time to be tested.

The IPO race: Anthropic is not waiting

The $1.2 trillion figure cannot be read in isolation. It is a move in a two-player game. Anthropic, OpenAI's archrival, raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation, surpassing OpenAI's valuation for the first time, according to FT reporting cited by Investopedia. Now the Claude maker is marching toward the public markets: Reuters reported earlier this month that Anthropic is expected to begin marketing its IPO in mid-October at the earliest and complete the listing before the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The numbers being discussed around Anthropic are even more startling. The FT reported that some of its investors are eyeing a public valuation of $2 trillion — which would top the record for the most valuable IPO ever. Bloomberg reported that Anthropic has selected Nasdaq as its listing venue. And the company's annualized revenue could reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of 2026, more than ten times where it started the year, according to the FT.

The template both companies are chasing was set this summer by SpaceX, whose June listing raised a record $86.3 billion. If OpenAI and Anthropic both list within months of each other at thirteen-figure valuations, 2026–27 will go down as the defining IPO window of the AI era — and the order in which they go, and at what prices, will set the terms of the rivalry for a decade.

The same frenzy is repricing everything around the labs: AI startup valuations are tripling as investors chase anything with an AI label.

Safety, scrutiny, and why 2026 is off the table

There is a paradox at the heart of this story: OpenAI is simultaneously the hottest private asset in the world and a company whose CEO says it should not go public yet. Sam Altman told Fortune this month that an IPO in 2026 is off the table, citing concerns about AI safety — a position he linked directly to the industry-wide reckoning over the technology's risks.

"I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don't feel pressure on that," Altman told Fortune.

That stance has sharpened in recent days. As TechPulse USA reported, Altman publicly agreed on September 12 with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to slow the pace of frontier AI development, writing that pacing the frontier "has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks." A pre-IPO round at $1.2 trillion would give OpenAI the financial room to honor that posture — staying private longer while the safety debate plays out, without starving the compute buildout.

The company's CFO, Sara Friar, has reportedly told employees the listing would likely come in 2027, or sooner "if our business continues to inflect." The $1.2 trillion talks suggest the business is inflecting faster than the calendar assumed.

FAQ: OpenAI's pre-IPO round and 2027 IPO

What valuation is OpenAI seeking? More than $1.2 trillion, in early-stage discussions initiated by investors rather than the company; no terms have been set and the figure could still move.

When will OpenAI IPO? An IPO is now expected next year, in 2027 — Altman has said a 2026 listing is off the table, and CFO Sara Friar has reportedly told employees the listing would likely come in 2027, or sooner if the business keeps inflecting.

Who is investing? Large investors in early talks; the March round's backers included Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank, and a new raise would let longtime backers increase exposure before listing.

How does this compare to Anthropic? Anthropic raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation and is marching toward its own IPO, with some investors eyeing a $2 trillion public valuation — a two-player race for the defining listing window of the AI era.

What a $1.2 trillion OpenAI means for the AI market

Step back from the numbers and the story is about the strange economics of the AI boom. OpenAI is raising money it does not strictly need, at a valuation no private company has ever commanded, initiated by investors desperate for exposure — all while its CEO argues the industry should slow down and its IPO waits for calmer waters. The contradiction is the point: in this market, capital is a weapon, and the company with the deepest reserves gets to set the pace of the race, whether that pace is fast or deliberately measured.

The capital wave is not confined to the labs — ByteDance's $1.5B AI bet on drug discovery shows the same money flooding adjacent bets.

For the broader market, a $1.2 trillion private round would be a statement that the AI trade still has room to run — and a warning. Valuations at this altitude leave no margin for disappointment. The talks are early, the figure could change, and OpenAI declined to comment. But the direction of travel is unmistakable: the AI labs are no longer startups. They are would-be sovereigns of the next economy, raising sovereign-scale money to prove it.

Sources: Financial Times (via Reuters, Sept. 15, 2026); Wall Street Journal (Sept. 16, 2026); Bloomberg (via The Vibes); Reuters; Investopedia; Fortune; Indian Express.