OpenAI reportedly seeks $30 billion more at a $1.4 trillion valuation, months after its "last" private round

TechCrunch's Marina Temkin, citing Bloomberg, reports that OpenAI is in talks to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion. Investors are reportedly eager to get in ahead of a public listing that is now expected next year. OpenAI's run-rate revenue reportedly rose 70% from July to reach $40 billion in August, following a refocus on coding products. OpenAI did not comment.

The round would follow OpenAI's $122 billion raise in March at an $852 billion valuation, which at the time was framed as the last private round before an IPO that had been expected in 2026. A new raise at a substantially higher valuation suggests that plan has shifted. The reported timing also overlaps with Nvidia's push on rogue-agent safety, a reminder that OpenAI is raising money while under heavy safety scrutiny.

Sam Altman has ruled out going public this year, citing safety. He told Fortune that a roughly 10% chance of AI killing everybody by the end of the decade is unacceptable, according to TechCrunch. At DevDay he went further, saying OpenAI won't go public until its models are safe, after earlier calling a 2026 listing ill-advised.

A large private round functions as a bridge. It lets OpenAI fund compute and research while avoiding the disclosure requirements and quarterly scrutiny of public markets, at a time when the company faces safety incidents, litigation and debate over the race dynamics among labs.

The reported figures are notable. A jump from $852 billion to $1.4 trillion within about six months, alongside a 70% rise in run-rate revenue over a short period, signals strong investor appetite. Run-rate revenue extrapolates current sales and can overstate durable income, and the figures come from unnamed sources rather than OpenAI disclosures.

The tension between safety rhetoric and fundraising is likely to draw scrutiny. Investors are betting on growth while the CEO publicly describes significant catastrophic risk. The round's final size and terms, whether new investors join and whether an IPO timeline firms up will indicate how that tension resolves. More in our funding coverage and OpenAI coverage.