How much is OpenAI worth? $1.25 trillion, with a big asterisk

OpenAI is worth $1.25 trillion on paper, measured before the new cash is added (what investors call a pre-money valuation). That is the price tag on a company that sells chatbot subscriptions, business tools and now ads, and that has never sold a share on a stock exchange.

The jump is still large. In March, OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation. Friar described the new price as almost 50% above March, and one estimate puts the step-up at roughly 47%. In eight months, the paper value of the company climbed by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Who is paying? Early backers in this close reportedly include Coatue Management and T. Rowe Price, and SoftBank and Abu Dhabi’s MGX took part. Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz are among the other names linked to the wider financing. OpenAI declined to comment on the deal, and it has not confirmed the full investor list.

The headline figure is a step down from the original plan. In late September, OpenAI was reported to be chasing $30 billion. Press reports said it first aimed for a $1.4 trillion valuation, and two investors said the opening ask was $1.5 trillion. Friar pushed back on air, saying the higher figure began with a media report and never came from OpenAI itself.

Either way, the cash collected so far covers only about 37% of that $30 billion goal. The rest of the round could lift the total to as much as $20 billion, with the remaining part expected to close in the coming weeks. A separate report put that follow-on at up to $9 billion. Until it closes, the final size is unknown.

So why the haircut? Timing. The round landed during a rough stretch for AI stocks. On Thursday, November 5, a sell-off wiped about $2.5 trillion off the Nasdaq, its largest one-day drop since April 2025. Investors were reacting to the Democratic wave in the US midterms, which many expect to bring tougher scrutiny of data center building and AI rules once the new Congress sits in January.

OpenAI’s pitch to investors is that its business is speeding up even as the market wobbles. Friar said the company grew 70% from the second to the third quarter, and that its enterprise business doubled.

She also gave a few figures that show where the money comes from:

• ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users.
• Revenue splits roughly evenly between consumers and businesses.
• Advertising reached a $1 billion yearly run rate by August.

Those are company figures, not audited results, and OpenAI hasn’t published full financial statements. That gap is one reason the price is a negotiation rather than a fixed fact. A private valuation reflects what a handful of big investors agreed to pay for a slice, not what millions of traders think the company is worth day to day.

OpenAI isn’t the only AI lab feeling the chill. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, filed its paperwork to go public and plans a Nasdaq listing in mid-November. About a month earlier, investors were said to expect a valuation of around $2 trillion for it.

That expectation has cooled fast, though reports don’t agree by how much. Some investors now put Anthropic near $1.5 trillion. Other potential buyers of its shares think it could be as low as $1.1 trillion. Four people familiar with Anthropic’s investor talks said backers doubted it could go ahead with its planned roadshow and a November listing, and the company could still decide to wait until the market calms down.

Put side by side, the two biggest independent AI labs are now priced in the same ballpark, and both are being marked down from where investors stood a few weeks ago.

OpenAI hasn’t tied any ChatGPT price or feature changes to this round. The effects that matter to most people are indirect.

If you hold Microsoft or Nvidia shares, directly or through a retirement fund, OpenAI’s ability to raise money matters, because both companies depend on OpenAI paying for its huge computing plans. A smaller, cheaper round is a sign that investors want more proof before they keep writing giant checks.

If you were hoping to buy OpenAI stock, you can’t yet. OpenAI is a private company. It has worked with investment banks to widen its investor base, including wealthy individuals and retail investors, but there is no public listing. CEO Sam Altman has said OpenAI is holding off on an IPO until it can make more confident claims about the safety of its models, and an IPO is now expected at some point next year.