OpenAI nears up to $30 billion funding round at $1.25 trillion valuation led by UAE investors

JUST IN: OpenAI nears a funding round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, led by UAE investors alongside Coatue, as a bridge to a planned 2027 IPO.

OpenAI is about to be worth one point two five trillion dollars.

The company is closing in on a funding round of up to 30 billion, and you can see the scale of it here. The money is led by investors from the United Arab Emirates alongside Coatue, and it's being pitched as an opportunistic bridge to an IPO. Signatures by the end of next week, that's the ask.

Sam Altman said last month that going public right now would be ill-advised. His own CFO told staff OpenAI will be a public company in 2027, so read that how you like. And there's a side deal in the works, buying compute capacity from the UAE, because this company told investors it wants to spend roughly 600 billion dollars on compute by 2030.

Meanwhile Anthropic is chasing a two trillion dollar IPO of its own. Private AI money hasn't noticed the sell-off. Yet.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.