OpenAI is now seeking about $20bn at a $1.25tn valuation, according to the Financial Times. It first put $30bn at $1.4tn to investors. The Wall Street Journal reported, according to The Next Web and TechCrunch, that about $11bn has been secured so far.
What was reported
The FT reported that investors had until Friday 30 October to commit, and that some of them reduced their commitments. It expects the first close to raise less than $20bn. CNBC, as relayed by The Next Web, confirmed the $20bn target, with the caveat that the round is still open and the figures could change.
According to The Next Web’s reporting on the WSJ account, the response from some large investors was described as “tepid”, and OpenAI told shareholders it expects to raise more in the coming weeks, aiming at family offices and wealthy individuals. The FT said a group of investors from the United Arab Emirates is leading the round. We found no statement from OpenAI confirming any of this, and the reports rely on people familiar with the matter.
Simple arithmetic puts the changes in scale: the target is a third smaller, and the valuation is about 11% lower.
A marker, not a break
OpenAI is still trying to raise about $20bn. This is not a company that cannot find money. What has moved is the price and the terms. TechCrunch tied the timing to a tech-stock sell-off driven by investor wariness over heavy AI infrastructure spending.
Our reading is that the signal is about the cost of capital rather than the health of the technology. The working assumption has been that the leading labs could name a price and the market would meet it. A cut in both size and valuation, in a round led by a small group of Gulf investors, suggests that assumption now carries a condition: the money is available, but it is no longer unlimited.
The timing matters too. The WSJ, as reported by The Next Web, said OpenAI plans to list as soon as early next year. A pre-listing round is, in effect, a rehearsal for the public market, and investors in it are pricing what that market may be willing to pay.
The other side of the balance sheet
This is half of a larger story. Equity is repricing at the top, while debt is tightening further down the stack: a Wall Street Journal report cited by Techmeme described CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale as effectively shut out of the bond market. We look at that in Neoclouds are shut out of the cheap bond market. For the earlier report on OpenAI’s round, see our first piece, and for the spending behind all of it, Big Tech’s AI build-out is outrunning its cash flow.
Sources
- Financial Times, OpenAI funding report (30 October 2026, paywalled)
- The Next Web, OpenAI funding round, $20bn target cut – relays the FT, WSJ and CNBC reports
- TechCrunch, “OpenAI reportedly lowers funding target for new round” (31 October 2026)
Photo: OpenAI website under a magnifying glass, by Jernej Furman, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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