OpenAI is working on another outsized private funding round rather than moving straight to public markets, according to reports. The AI lab is seeking up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, with Coatue and investors from the United Arab Emirates named as leads, CNBC reported. The terms remain under negotiation and could shift before any deal closes. OpenAI declined to comment.

A valuation that rewrites the record books

If the round lands anywhere near the reported figure, OpenAI would become the most valuable private company ever. The number also resets expectations for its eventual IPO, which the company has already begun preparing: it filed confidential paperwork in June. The last private raise, completed in March, valued the ChatGPT maker at $852 billion post-money, meaning the new round would represent a substantial step up in a matter of months.

The reports are not identical. Bloomberg reported roughly a month earlier that OpenAI was working on a $30 billion raise at a $1.4 trillion valuation. The gap between $1.4 trillion and $1.25 trillion reflects the fact that these are live negotiations rather than settled terms, and the final structure could include different instruments or investor allocations.

Compute, not just capital

The UAE component carries strategic weight beyond the cheque size. CNBC reported that the Gulf funding could be paired with an agreement to secure additional computing capacity for OpenAI from the UAE. That detail matters for anyone tracking AI infrastructure: frontier model training and inference are increasingly constrained by access to power, land and accelerators, and sovereign-backed capital is becoming a way to bundle financing with physical capacity. For OpenAI, a deal that converts investment into compute would address two bottlenecks at once.

The IPO backdrop

OpenAI's confidential filing in June signalled that the company intends to test public markets, but the sequence now looks like another private round first. A $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation would set a demanding benchmark for the IPO itself: public investors would be asked to accept a valuation above anything previously seen for a private technology company, on revenue and margin figures that have not been disclosed. The March round at $852 billion post-money already made OpenAI one of the most richly valued private enterprises in history; the new round would extend that trajectory rather than consolidate it.

Pressure on Anthropic

The ripple effects extend to OpenAI's closest rival. Anthropic's IPO is widely seen as closer to materialising, with rumours suggesting a public S-1 filing could arrive at any moment. CNBC reported that Anthropic is seeking a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuation for its debut. Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May, a round many expected to be its last major private raise before going public, and it too filed confidential paperwork in June. If OpenAI prices a private round above $1 trillion, it gives Anthropic a comparable anchor for its own public valuation — and raises the stakes for both companies' underwriters.

What to watch

Three things will determine how this story resolves. First, whether the round closes at $1.25 trillion, drifts toward Bloomberg's $1.4 trillion, or lands somewhere else entirely. Second, whether the UAE compute arrangement is confirmed as part of the package, since that would make this a strategic infrastructure deal as much as a financial one. Third, the timing of Anthropic's S-1, which would give the market its first detailed look at the financials of a leading AI lab and a reference point for valuing OpenAI's own eventual listing. For now, the numbers are reported and the negotiations are live, and the most valuable private company in history may get more valuable before it ever trades publicly.