Product1 publisher3 min readPublished
OpenAI holds out for $1.5tn after investors approached at $1.2tn
The New York Times reports OpenAI is weighing one more private round at about $1.5tn before it lists, roughly double its last valuation. It points to demand for its Codex coding tool to justify the number.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- The New York Times reported on 16 September that OpenAI is considering one more private funding round before its IPO at a valuation of about $1.5tn, citing people familiar with the matter.
- The Financial Times reported the talks first, on 15 September, at about $1.2tn, and said investors had started the conversations while OpenAI declined to comment.
- CNBC's sources said some investors pitched the round as a way for employees to sell shares, and that no formal discussions are underway.
- OpenAI filed its draft prospectus with the SEC confidentially in June, and Bloomberg reported that the company is weighing legal limits on what it can share with investors.
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Why it matters
- constraint The draft prospectus is already on file, so the round is likely to produce less operating detail for the market. Buyers planning 2027 roadmaps should not expect the raise to answer their questions about pricing or capacity.
- decision Renewal terms are being negotiated against unaudited revenue figures, and Bloomberg's sources say fresh cash could push the listing back one or two quarters.
- contradiction Whether OpenAI is actually raising changes how much weight the $1.5tn deserves: the New York Times has the company holding a minimum price, while CNBC's sources say it is not in talks.
- exposure If the round is partly a secondary sale, as some investors proposed, the money reaches shareholders and staff who already banked about $7bn in August.
A platform team that moved Codex out of a pilot and into its release pipeline this quarter will hear from finance about what the line item looks like in eighteen months. The figures available to answer that came from people familiar with the company, talking to reporters. The New York Times put OpenAI's annualised revenue above $40bn in August, roughly double its level at the end of 2025 [16]. Quarterly revenue went from $5.7bn in the first quarter to $6.7bn in the second, and the Wall Street Journal reported that the operating margin fell [17].
Those two revenue numbers are not on the same basis. Four times the second quarter's $6.7bn is $26.8bn [5], and the August annualised figure is above $40bn, so most of the growth landed after the quarter closed. At $1.5tn the company would be priced at under 37.5 times that annualised revenue [3]. Anthropic, which the New York Times reported could raise more than $100bn at a $2tn valuation on about $65bn of annualised revenue, would be priced at roughly 31 times [19] [4]. "We still have an incredible balance sheet," chief financial officer Sarah Friar told CNBC's Jim Cramer on 15 September [10].
The $1.5tn is OpenAI's answer to a number someone else brought. Investors floated $1.2tn; OpenAI's position, according to the New York Times, is at least $1.5tn, a gap of $300bn, or 25% above the figure on the table [4] [2]. The justification given to the paper was growing demand for Codex, plus the latest models, GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol [4].
Securities law is why none of this reaches customers as new information. With a draft prospectus on file, OpenAI has to take care with confidential information it shares with investors, the New York Times reported [8]. The cash would also move the listing date. Bloomberg's sources said the extra money could push it back by one or two quarters and could support more acquisitions, after deals including Jony Ive's device startup io and the Python tools maker Astral [6]. On 12 September Altman ruled out listing this year and gave AI safety as the reason [14]. "Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public," he told Fortune [1].
For a team with Codex on the critical path, ask two questions per feature: whether another model could be substituted inside one quarter, and whether the price is fixed in a contract that outlasts the next renewal. A feature that fails both is exposed to a supplier whose numbers cannot be checked. Write one line per feature, naming the number that would make you change course and the date you could see it. For most buyers that date follows the listing, and Friar told staff in August that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027," adding that it could list sooner if "our business continues to inflect" [13].
What to watch
- Whether any formal round opens at all, after CNBC's sources said OpenAI is not currently engaged in talks.
- Whether Anthropic's Nasdaq listing, reported as possible as soon as October, puts a competitor's audited numbers in front of buyers first.
- Whether the round is structured to let employees sell, following the roughly $7bn secondary sale completed in August.