OpenAI set to raise $30 billion at reduced valuation

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The discount reaches $150 billion, or about 11%. It comes the week when Wall Street sanctions infrastructure spending on artificial intelligence and when Anthropic could make public its IPO prospectus.

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The round is led by the American fund Coatue and by investors from the United Arab Emirates, according to sources close to the discussions cited by CNBC. OpenAI told them on Thursday that they were aiming for signatures by the end of next week. The final amount is not set in stone.

The 1,250 billion are understood before the arrival of new money (so-called pre-money valuation). Once the 30 billion is paid, OpenAI would be worth at most 1,280 billion dollars.

The starting price was more ambitious. Bloomberg reported on September 29 that OpenAI was asking for at least $30 billion on a valuation of around $1.4 trillion before investment. The agency added on October 6 that this price was presented as fixed and not negotiated, and that the Abu Dhabi fund MGX and other Emirati funds were considering providing up to 10 billion cumulatively. This firm tariff has fallen by 150 billion in a little over three weeks.

Everything is relative. OpenAI was worth $852 billion after investment following its previous fundraising, completed in March. Even planed, the existing shares are therefore worth 47% more than seven months ago.

Some of the Emirati money could be backed by a trade deal that would give OpenAI more computing capacity in the country. The needs are colossal: the company has announced to its investors some $600 billion in computing spending by 2030.

The lifting is negotiated in a notch market. Meta raised the bottom of its 2026 investment range from $130 billion to $135 billion on Wednesday evening, with the ceiling unchanged at $145 billion. Its free cash flow (the money left after investments are paid) fell to -$2.12 billion in the third quarter from +10.63 billion a year earlier. The group is also preparing a new category of shares without voting rights to finance the future.

“More expenses, negative cash flow, not enough income generated by these expenses,” summarizes Robert Pavlik (Dakota Wealth) to Reuters. The contagion was immediate. The Nasdaq fell 2.6% on Thursday and CoreWeave fell around 10%. Nvidia subsequently lost more than 4%.

Difficult, in this context, to defend 1,400 billion. Meta is profitable and is sanctioned for 145 billion annual expenses, while OpenAI promises 600 billion by 2030 without being listed.

Machine-translated from French