OpenAI Valuation 2026: Latest Round and Investors

The last closed OpenAI round is the March 31, 2026 financing: $122 billion of committed capital at an $852 billion post-money valuation. A separate ~$30 billion raise at roughly $1.4 trillion is still only in talks as of October 22, 2026, timed to lock capital before Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO. The gap between those two marks is the whole story: primary capital is being asked to pay today for a year-end revenue target the company has not yet hit, while the last employee tender and the visible secondary tape still sit much closer to $852 billion–$1 trillion.

The closed mark: $122 billion at $852 billion post-money

OpenAI itself announced on March 31, 2026 that it had closed $122 billion of committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. That figure includes the new money. The February announcement that started the round was smaller and cleaner: $110 billion against a $730 billion pre-money valuation. The extra $12 billion, closed at the same price, lifts the arithmetic exactly: $730 billion pre-money plus $122 billion equals the $852 billion post-money OpenAI and Bloomberg both reported. The New York Times’s later reference to a $730 billion valuation was the February pre-money figure, not a second mark. [1] [2] [3] [4]

The round is a circular infrastructure financing dressed as equity. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank supplied the overwhelming majority of the dollars, and two of those three also sell OpenAI the compute the capital is meant to buy.

• Amazon committed up to $50 billion. The first $15 billion was for Series C preferred; the remaining $35 billion was contingent on “specified milestones,” with an IPO or direct listing as the alternate trigger. Earlier reporting had framed the contingency as AGI or a listing. Amazon completed the full $50 billion by July 31, 2026, wiring a final $21.3 billion after June 30 once milestones were treated as met. In exchange, AWS became the exclusive third-party cloud distributor for OpenAI’s Frontier enterprise-agent platform, and the cloud contract was expanded. [3] [5] [6] [7]
• Nvidia committed $30 billion, tied to multi-gigawatt capacity on its systems (OpenAI has described 3 GW of dedicated inference and 2 GW of training on Vera Rubin). The Information reported that Nvidia paid a final $10 billion tranche on October 1 alongside SoftBank; that payment rests on anonymous sourcing and was not confirmed in a company release the way SoftBank’s was. [2] [8]
• SoftBank committed $30 billion in the follow-on, split into three equal $10 billion tranches executed April 1, July 1, and October 1, 2026, via Vision Fund 2. SoftBank’s own October 1 release confirms the final tranche is done. Cumulative investment is $64.6 billion for about 13% ownership. The first two tranches were drawn on a $40 billion bridge facility; the third was funded from an $11.1 billion foreign-currency high-yield bond sale announced September 24. SoftBank then canceled the remaining undrawn bridge capacity and said all bridge borrowings were repaid. [9] [10]
• Microsoft “continued” as a participant rather than as an anchor of new cash. Its own fiscal 2026 Form 10-K, as reported by secondary summaries of that filing, puts its as-converted interest at about 25% as of June 30, 2026, down from about 27% right after the October 2025 recapitalization, because later funding diluted it. Microsoft has funded about $11.9 billion of a $13 billion historical commitment. The nonprofit OpenAI Foundation retained control, with roughly 26% at the recapitalization. [1] [11] [12]

The rest of the syndicate is a who’s-who of crossover and sovereign capital, not a new strategic buyer. SoftBank co-led alongside a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, TPG, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price. Other named participants include Altimeter, Appaloosa, ARK Invest, BlackRock affiliates, Blackstone, Coatue, D1, Dragoneer, Fidelity, Insight, Sequoia, Temasek, Thrive, and UC Investments. More than $3 billion came from individuals through bank channels—the first time OpenAI opened the round that way—and ARK said it would hold the shares in ETFs. An undrawn revolving credit facility was expanded to about $4.7 billion. [1] [1]

For anyone underwriting the next check, the mechanism matters more than the headline. Most of the $122 billion was not free cash from financial sponsors. It was strategic capital from chip and cloud vendors, partly milestone-gated, partly paid in tranches over seven months, and economically linked to purchase commitments that send a large share of the dollars back to the same investors.

The open mark: ~$30 billion at about $1.4 trillion, not closed

As of October 22, 2026, no new primary round has closed. Bloomberg reported on September 29 that OpenAI was aiming to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of around $1.4 trillion not including the money raised—a pre-money figure—as a bridge after the company pushed its IPO out of 2026. Reuters reported on October 19 that OpenAI was racing to secure commitments for a round of about $30 billion that could value it at over $1.4 trillion, specifically before Anthropic’s expected mid-November listing. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment; the terms are unconfirmed. [13] [14] [15]

The investor list in the current talks is narrower and more familiar than the March syndicate. Reuters’s sources named SoftBank, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and other existing backers, with meetings the prior week aimed at long-only funds and sovereign wealth funds. The point of the compressed timetable is competitive, not just operational: OpenAI and Anthropic are courting the same pool, and OpenAI wants a private mark set before Anthropic’s IPO disclosures become the public comparable. Edward Best, co-head of capital markets at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, told Reuters the logic is straightforward—set your own valuation before a listed peer forces the comparison. [14] [16]

There is a real pre- versus post-money ambiguity in the press. Bloomberg is explicit that $1.4 trillion excludes the new money. Reuters says “over $1.4 trillion” without the same precision. PitchBook’s October 12 note models a reported $1.43 trillion post-money figure. Those are not the same price. A $1.4 trillion pre-money on a $30 billion raise implies about $1.43 trillion post-money, which is why the two numbers keep appearing side by side. Until a term sheet is signed, both should be treated as reported asks, not marks. [13] [17]

The stated use of proceeds is balance-sheet insurance. Reuters’s sources said OpenAI needs the capital for infrastructure commitments and to fortify the balance sheet if a weaker IPO market pushes the planned 2027 listing further out. Sam Altman has said the company will not list in 2026 and has tied any debut to being able to make confident safety claims. Confidential S-1 work began in June 2026; the listing itself slipped. [14] [18]

Revenue basis: 17x on the last close, ~28x on the new ask

The multiple only makes sense once the revenue definition is fixed. OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion at the end of September 2026, Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported in early October. A widely circulated ~$68–70 billion figure from late September was an investor construct that grossed up partner-channel sales so OpenAI could be compared with Anthropic, which counts the full value of contracts sold through Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. OpenAI’s own investor number counts only its share. The company is separately telling investors it expects annualized revenue to reach or exceed $70 billion by year-end, with the acceleration attributed in part to GPT-6 Astra and to price cuts on lower-cost models that lifted usage. At the March close it said it was generating $2 billion a month. [19] [20] [21] [14] [1]

That accounting choice moves the multiple by about 40%.

• Last confirmed primary: $852 billion post-money on ~$50 billion of late-September annualized revenue is about 17x. StockAnalysis lists a 17.0 price-to-sales ratio on a $50 billion run rate. On the $2 billion monthly figure disclosed at the March close, the same $852 billion was closer to the mid-30s on then-current run rate, so revenue has done a lot of the catch-up since spring. [22] [23]
• Proposed round: $1.4 trillion pre-money is about 28x the $50 billion OpenAI actually reported, and about 20x if the $70 billion year-end target is hit. PitchBook’s framing is the same math from the other side: a $1.43 trillion post-money is 28.6x the $50 billion run rate and 20.4x the $70 billion target. The round, in other words, prices December’s revenue in October. [20] [17]

PitchBook’s October 12 note puts fair value near $1 trillion, below the reported round, and notes that the year-end target assumes growth slows to roughly half the third-quarter pace. It also flags that costs are running at nearly three times revenue, so the multiple is not being earned by margin. Internal plans reported by the Financial Times have OpenAI burning on the order of $278–280 billion of cash from 2026 through 2030, with revenue in those projections rising from about $36 billion in 2026 to about $350 billion in 2030, and compute-and-infrastructure spending measured in the hundreds of billions. Those are press reports of company plans, not audited forecasts, but they are the numbers investors are being asked to underwrite. A 2025 operating loss of about $20.9 billion on roughly $13.1 billion of revenue has also been reported from the company’s accounts. [17] [24] [25] [26]

Secondaries and the tender sit well below the $1.4 trillion ask

The cleanest non-primary print of 2026 is flat. In August, OpenAI completed a roughly $7 billion employee share sale or buyback at the same $852 billion valuation as the March round. Unlike the October 2025 tender—about $6.6 billion at $500 billion, bought by outside investors including Thrive, SoftBank, and T. Rowe Price—the August deal was funded with the company’s own cash. No new names joined the cap table, and the step-up pattern that had run from $157 billion to $300 billion to $500 billion to $852 billion stopped. [27] [28] [29]

Live secondary quotes are higher than that tender, but not at the new ask. StockAnalysis, sourcing Clarity (formerly Hiive), showed a last price of $838.50 as of October 21, 2026, implying about $987 billion—roughly 16% above the March primary and the August tender, and about 30% below a $1.4 trillion pre-money. PrivateMarketView publishes a higher October mark of about $1.16–1.2 trillion, or roughly $955 a share, which it says is set by secondary prices and fund marks and is up 36% from the March round. Those two aggregators do not agree; Clarity’s quoted price and implied valuation are the more transparent of the two, and PMV’s share-level detail is largely paywalled. Either way, the observable secondary tape has not validated $1.4 trillion. [22] [30] [31]

The implication for a new investor is a three-tier market. Employees were cashed out in August at $852 billion. Accredited secondary buyers in late October are transacting in a band that implies something under $1 trillion on the clearest public quote, or low-$1 trillions on a less transparent aggregator. The company is asking primary investors for a pre-money nearly 65% above the last closed round and roughly 40% above the Clarity-implied secondary, in exchange for capital that existing strategic holders may or may not match.

Is the valuation justified? The argument, and the holes

The bull case is a distribution flywheel, not a model-quality argument. OpenAI’s March letter said it was generating $2 billion a month, had more than 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million subscribers, and that enterprise was already over 40% of revenue and on track to match consumer by year-end. Later reporting put weekly users near one billion by August and annualized revenue near $50 billion by late September, with enterprise the growth engine. At 17x a $50 billion run rate, the March mark looks less extreme than it did in the spring, when revenue had not yet caught the valuation. If the year-end $70 billion target is real, even $1.4 trillion is about 20x forward run rate—rich for a company that is deeply unprofitable, but inside the range public software has paid for category leaders. [1] [19] [25]

The skeptical case is that the buyer set, the cash plan, and the comparable are all deteriorating at once.

• The multiple is being asked on revenue that has not arrived. PitchBook’s conclusion is that the round prices a target, and that fair value is nearer $1 trillion. The October 8 correction from a ~$70 billion narrative to a ~$50 billion reported run rate was large enough to hit the tape: Nasdaq and chip stocks sold off as investors repriced companies whose spending depends on OpenAI. [17] [20] [32]
• The capital is circular, so the valuation is partly a transfer price between a customer and its suppliers. Nvidia’s $30 billion and Amazon’s $50 billion sit next to multi-year chip and cloud purchase commitments. A meaningful fraction of “investment” is prepaid demand for the investors’ own products. That supports the infrastructure build; it does not independently validate what a financial buyer would pay for the equity. [2] [8] [6]
• The cash plan does not close without more raises. Press reports of OpenAI’s own multi-year plan show negative free cash flow on the order of $280 billion through 2030, with the March raise exhausted around 2028 and something like $100 billion-plus still to be raised even after this bridge. A $30 billion round, if it closes, is a waypoint, not a solution. [24] [25]
• The largest financial sponsor is already showing strain. SoftBank funded the last $10 billion with the world’s largest high-yield corporate bond issue of that moment, at yields approaching 10%, and its credit-default swaps were already elevated. After the Reuters report that SoftBank and MGX were in talks for the new round, SoftBank CDS jumped 12 basis points overnight to 432, a four-year high, according to market commentary. A 13% holder financing follow-on equity with junk debt is not a signal that the $1.4 trillion price is easy to clear. [10] [33]
• The comparable OpenAI is trying to front-run may not cooperate. Anthropic’s hoped-for IPO valuation has already been walked back in the press from about $2 trillion toward something nearer $1.5 trillion after weaker-than-hoped results, even as some investors still want a higher number. If Anthropic lists and the public market applies a lower multiple to a peer with disclosed losses and huge compute commitments, OpenAI’s private $1.4 trillion becomes the number that has to be defended, not the number that sets the market. [34] [18]

What this means for anyone trying to enter or compete with this cap table: the March round is a closed, documented fact at $852 billion post-money, mostly strategic money, heavily tranched and partly conditional. The $1.4 trillion figure is an unconfirmed pre-money ask on a round that had not closed by October 22. Secondary and tender pricing have not ratified it. The valuation is justified only if annualized revenue actually reaches ~$70 billion by year-end and public or crossover buyers accept ~20x that run rate on a business whose own plan still requires well over $100 billion of additional capital before it turns cash-flow positive. If either assumption fails, the last price that both employees and the company were willing to transact at—$852 billion in August—is the more relevant mark.

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Recent Findings Supplement (October 2026)

OpenAI is accelerating talks for a ~$30 billion primary financing round targeting a valuation above $1.4 trillion (reports indicate this figure is pre-money or excludes new capital) as of mid-to-late October 2026, positioning it ahead of rival Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO.[1][2]

This compressed timeline reflects competition for overlapping capital pools from sovereign wealth funds and institutions, alongside OpenAI’s recent revenue momentum. The round builds on earlier September/early October reports of similar size and valuation targets and serves as a potential bridge or pre-IPO financing while OpenAI plans a 2027 listing.[3][4]

• Size and structure: Approximately $30 billion in new commitments sought; no detailed tranche structure or conditions (e.g., milestones) publicly disclosed for this round. It follows the March 2026 close of a much larger $122 billion round at an $852 billion post-money valuation.[5]
• Investors: Existing backers SoftBank Group and Abu Dhabi-based MGX (a sovereign wealth fund) are in talks to participate; no confirmed new commitments from Nvidia, Microsoft, or additional sovereign funds in the latest reporting. SoftBank and MGX previously participated in the March round.[1][2]
• Valuation basis: Targeting >$1.4 trillion (pre-money per Bloomberg reporting relayed in multiple outlets), a substantial step-up from the March $852 billion post-money mark. OpenAI is pitching investors on an annualized revenue run-rate of ~$50 billion (post-GPT-6 Astra launch), with projections to reach $70 billion by year-end, implying a revenue multiple in the mid-to-high 20s at the target valuation.[4][3]

SoftBank completed the final $10 billion tranche of its $30 billion commitment from the March 2026 round on October 1, 2026 (funded partly via a record high-yield bond issuance), bringing its cumulative OpenAI investment to $64.6 billion for an approximate 13% stake.[6][7]

This closes out SoftBank’s three-tranche structure ($10 billion each in April, July, and October) tied to the prior round. Nvidia’s parallel $30 billion commitment from the same round appears fully deployed without similar tranching details in recent reports. Amazon’s up-to-$50 billion commitment included contingencies (portions tied to IPO or AGI milestones).[8]

Secondary-market and tender activity shows valuations in the $1.16–1.4 trillion range in October 2026, generally below or aligned with the proposed primary round target.[9]

• PrivateMarketView marks imply ~$1.16–1.2 trillion (~$955/share) based on secondary trading as of October 2026, up ~36% from the March primary round.[10]
• Other platforms (e.g., AG Dillon) reference ~$1.4 trillion implied valuations tied to recent primary discussions or marks.[11]
• An August 2026 employee tender/share sale of ~$7 billion occurred at the flat $852 billion valuation (company-funded, no new external capital or repricing).[12]

Analyst and market commentary frames the $1.4 trillion target as aggressive amid overlapping investor pools, rising scrutiny of AI infrastructure costs/valuations, and competitive dynamics with Anthropic (whose own IPO valuation expectations have faced downward pressure).[5]

OpenAI highlights post-GPT-6 growth and pricing flexibility to justify the step-up, while the timing aims to lock in capital before Anthropic disclosures enable direct comparisons. Broader context includes concerns over sustained losses (with profitability forecasts extending to 2030 in some plans) and massive compute commitments, though specific justification analyses for the exact multiple remain limited in available reporting.[2]

For competitors or entrants: The rapid valuation escalation (from $852 billion post-money in March to $1.4 trillion+ targets) underscores the premium on demonstrated revenue traction and strategic compute/investor ties, but also highlights execution risks around closing amid rival IPOs and valuation scrutiny. Overlapping investor bases and tranching precedents (e.g., SoftBank) suggest structured deals with contingencies may persist. Secondary liquidity at lower marks could pressure primary terms or provide alternative entry points.[13]

No major new regulatory, policy, or independent research findings on the financing itself appear in post-April 2026 sources; updates center on deal timing, investor participation, and revenue narratives. Details remain fluid as talks continue.