OpenAI is rushing to close a massive $30 billion funding round—targeting a valuation north of $1.4 trillion—to lock in its private valuation before rival Anthropic hits the public markets.
By securing capital before Anthropic’s anticipated public debut, OpenAI aims to set its own valuation terms.
As reported, Anthropic’s upcoming financial disclosures (via its confidential S-1 filing) will give Wall Street a transparent look into frontier AI financials, which could invite intense scrutiny and direct comparisons for OpenAI.
Sam Altman’s AI firm has been pitching investors on an annualized revenue run-rate between $50 billion and $70 billion, though the race highlights mounting pressure as both firms scale up infrastructure and compute spending ahead of their expected public offerings.
The rapid timetable reflects, in part, a desire to get ahead of Anthropic as the two frontier labs are increasingly tapping in to a similar investor base.
Experts weighs if OpenAI wants to capitalize on its recent revenue growth after launching new models.
OpenAI is pitching investors on growth that accelerated after the launch of its GPT-6 Astra model, saying it had reached $50 billion in annualized revenue and expecting that figure to rise to $70 billion by year-end.
The AI platform has also cut prices on its cheaper models, which it said has boosted usage, and told investors it can further lower the price of AI models.
Though there is high demand for the shares of both companies, investors face the challenge of evaluating and allocating capital to two complexes, competing offerings within days or weeks of each other.
Some investor’s view OpenAI’s financing push as an effort to lock in capital from funds that might otherwise devote more of their resources to Anthropic’s IPO.
