OpenAI in Talks for $30B Round Ahead of IPO

OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, is in talks for a new funding round of up to $30 billion. That would value the company at $1.25 trillion. Investment firm Coatue is leading the round, with investors from the UAE also taking part. There are reports that the UAE investors are trying to negotiate extra compute capacity for OpenAI on top of the investment itself. Back in June, OpenAI filed confidential paperwork to start the IPO process. But no official IPO prospectus has been published yet.

That $1.25 trillion valuation is for a single funding round that has not closed yet. In September, reports put the valuation at $1.4 trillion. Earlier this year, in March, OpenAI was valued at $852 billion. These are all preliminary figures discussed during negotiations, since no official IPO prospectus exists yet. Still, investors seem ready to put in tens of billions of dollars without even knowing OpenAI's real financial numbers.