Report: OpenAI Seeks at Least $30 Billion at a Valuation of Roughly $1.4 Trillion
Bloomberg reports that the company is in early negotiations to raise another massive private round, just months after its March round of $122 billion. At the same time, Sam Altman has postponed an IPO until at least 2027 — but several of the figures in the retellings conflict with each other.
OpenAI is working to raise at least $30 billion in new capital at a valuation of around $1.4 trillion. That is according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, as retold by several US media outlets on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. The talks are said to be at an early stage, the terms could change, and the fundraising is said to be driven by strong investor interest, according to the sources (CryptoBriefing, Parameter).
It is worth emphasizing what this actually is: a report of early negotiations, not a confirmed deal. OpenAI itself is not quoted about the round, and the Bloomberg article is available only through secondary retellings. The round could fail, change in size, or arrive on entirely different terms.
From $852 Billion to $1.4 Trillion in Half a Year
If the number holds, it would be a steep new step upward. In March of this year, OpenAI closed a round of $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion — at the time the largest round in Silicon Valley history, anchored by SoftBank, Amazon, and Nvidia (Yahoo Finance/Quartz, GuruFocus via Yahoo Finance).
A valuation of $1.4 trillion would moreover, according to Bloomberg's reporting as retold, lift OpenAI above Anthropic's latest private valuation. This too is a relay of Bloomberg via anonymous sources, not a verified comparison (CryptoBriefing).
The IPO That Slips Away
The timing is no coincidence. Earlier in September, CEO Sam Altman said that OpenAI will not go public in 2026, and that a listing now would be "ill-advised," citing the ongoing safety work and how quickly the technology is developing. Any potential listing is thus pushed to at least 2027 (Yahoo Finance/Quartz, GuruFocus via Yahoo Finance, Parameter).
The news of a new private mega-round comes just days after OpenAI pulled the GPT-6.1 Astra model over internal safety concerns. Taken together, the two events point in the same direction: the company is choosing private capital and preserving its room to maneuver, rather than binding itself to the stock market's quarterly rhythm while safety work sits at the top of the agenda.
Parameter writes that OpenAI reportedly submitted confidential IPO documentation to the SEC in June of last year, without this having led to a concrete timeline. That claim is not confirmed by other sources in the source material and should be read with caution (Parameter).
The Numbers — and Where the Sources Conflict
Bloomberg is said to have reported that OpenAI's annualized revenue has passed $40 billion, growth of 70 percent since July (Yahoo Finance/Quartz). Parameter, by contrast, puts annual revenue at "approaching $70 billion," and says enterprise sales have grown more than 100 percent since July (Parameter).
These figures cannot be reconciled from the available source material, and the difference — nearly $30 billion in annualized revenue — is large enough to matter a great deal to how expensive a $1.4 trillion valuation really is. We leave the conflict open rather than quietly picking one number.
Yahoo/Quartz also cites the WSJ as having reported that CFO Sarah Friar has expressed concern about revenue growth and the costs in compute contracts. This too rests on secondary retelling, not on the WSJ article itself.
What Remains Unanswered
- Does the round actually exist? No OpenAI statement or primary documentation confirms the $30 billion or the $1.4 trillion. Terms could change, and the talks could collapse.
- Which investors? No sources name participants in the new round. Whether SoftBank, Amazon, and Nvidia from the March round will engage again is unanswered.
- What about the revenue? The conflict between more than $40 billion and nearly $70 billion in annualized revenue must be resolved before we can know anything certain about the valuation basis.
- The SEC filing? Parameter's claim of a confidential submission from June of last year remains unconfirmed.
- An IPO in 2027? Altman's remarks point to at least 2027, but no concrete date exists.
The reliable core of this story is, in practice, this: Altman has said OpenAI will not go public in 2026, the company raised $122 billion in March, and Bloomberg reports — through several independent retellings of the same underlying sources — that even larger private amounts are now on the table. The rest is still negotiation.