By Hamza Faisal

OpenAI has raised $15 billion in a new funding round that values the ChatGPT maker at $1.25 trillion, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the deal. The figure is about half the sum the company first went out to raise.

The company had initially sought as much as $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, according to CNBC's David Faber, who first reported the deal. The final amount came in at roughly half that target, and the valuation landed below an earlier $1.5 trillion goal the company had floated to investors. People familiar with the matter described the raise as opportunistic financing, intended to shore up OpenAI's balance sheet ahead of a potential initial public offering in 2027.

The round has not formally closed and is expected to wrap up within the next few weeks, according to the reports. OpenAI itself has not announced the funding. A previous $11 billion tranche of the same round closed on November 6.

A smaller round than planned

The scaled-back terms reflect a shift in how investors are pricing the AI boom. Earlier this year, OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation. The new $1.25 trillion price tag is about $398 billion higher than that March level, but investors pushed back on both the size of the round and the valuation, and the company cut its targets as technology stocks weakened.

CNBC reported that OpenAI has already taken in about $30 billion from Nvidia and about $65 billion from SoftBank across its recent fundraising. SoftBank and Abu Dhabi-backed MGX were among the investors in the November 6 tranche, alongside Coatue, according to earlier reporting on the round.

The fundraising also comes with a clearer picture of OpenAI's finances. The Wall Street Journal reported that third-quarter revenue reached about $10 billion, up nearly 50% from the previous quarter and the first time the company has crossed that level in a single quarter. The operating loss widened at the same time, to $10.9 billion from $10.1 billion in the second quarter, as the company pours money into computing power and data centres.

The money race ahead of Anthropic's debut

OpenAI's raise lands a week before its closest rival goes public. Anthropic is scheduled to price its initial public offering on November 18 and begin trading on the Nasdaq on November 19 under the ticker ANT. The company plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, implying a fully diluted valuation of up to about $1.405 trillion at the top of the range.

The two companies are now raising capital on parallel tracks at strikingly similar valuations, and the market's verdict on Anthropic next week is likely to shape how OpenAI's own listing is priced if it proceeds in 2027.

What the cash is for

The new money is expected to fund model development, computing infrastructure and data-centre investment, the areas where OpenAI's spending has ballooned. The company has previously set out plans to spend roughly $600 billion on computing capacity by 2030, a figure that has made investors nervous about how quickly the AI labs can turn huge infrastructure bets into profits.

For now, OpenAI's message to investors is that growth is still accelerating — revenue up by half in a single quarter — even as losses widen.