September 30, 2026 — The fundraising never stops.
What happened
OpenAI is looking to raise up to $30 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion — not counting the new money — according to Bloomberg News sources cited September 29. OpenAI declined to comment. One source said investor demand is being driven by robust revenue growth, and Axios reported Tuesday that the company is on track for annualized revenue of nearly $70 billion, up 70% since the start of its third quarter — though the report cautioned that expenses, the other half of the story, remain unclear.
No IPO this year
The raise would come instead of a public listing. CEO Sam Altman told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday that the company won’t go public this year, saying it wants to deal with increased safety concerns around AI without the added pressure of being a newly listed company — the firm is “adjusting to a new level” of AI capability and wants to get its feet under it first. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential IPO paperwork, with Anthropic expected to list as soon as November. If Anthropic lists first, it would set the valuation benchmark for the AI labs that follow — and SpaceX, which went public in June at $1.77 trillion, still holds the record everyone’s chasing.
Why it matters
Strip away the trillion-dollar headlines and the strategy is legible: stay private while capabilities — and the risks around them — keep scaling, and let investors fund the compute buildout. The risk for the rest of the AI economy is concentration: when the two leading labs are raising at these valuations, everyone else’s funding bar rises too. For subscribers, the practical question is simpler — a well-funded OpenAI keeps shipping, which keeps the tools you use getting better, and keeps the pressure on competitors to match.
Sources: Bloomberg (via PYMNTS), Axios (via PYMNTS), PYMNTS