The first tranche of OpenAI’s latest round has closed at roughly USD 11 billion, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The money arrived at the company on Friday and values OpenAI at about USD 1.25 trillion.
The rest is expected within weeks. Bloomberg reported that the completed round could reach USD 20 billion in total. OpenAI declined to comment.
The ask went down, twice
The sequence matters more than the headline figure. In late September, foreign media reported that OpenAI wanted at least USD 30 billion at a pre-money valuation of about USD 1.4 trillion. The round was framed as bridge capital after the company pushed back its listing, intended to fund operations until public markets could take over.
By late October, the Financial Times reported that the target had been cut by about USD 10 billion, to roughly USD 20 billion, and that the valuation expectation had come down from USD 1.4 trillion to USD 1.25 trillion. Reuters, relaying the same reporting, noted that some investors had trimmed planned allocations and that the first close would probably fall short of the revised target.
It did. USD 11 billion is an enormous sum and a clear miss against both versions of the plan.
Who is actually in
Coatue and T. Rowe Price participated in the first close, according to Bloomberg. The wider group includes SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, alongside a consortium of investors from the United Arab Emirates. OpenAI is also working with investment banks to bring in high net worth individuals and retail buyers.
That mix is worth noting for Asian allocators. SoftBank is the largest single technology investor in the region and its participation anchors the round’s risk appetite. Gulf capital is now a standing feature of American AI balance sheets rather than a one-off.
The question the cut exposes
Lowering a target is not a signal that demand for AI has gone. It is a signal that the price of funding it has become harder to agree on. Investors who were comfortable writing cheques at a USD 1.4 trillion mark in September wanted a different entry point eight weeks later.
OpenAI’s own answer is that spending has to continue. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar, speaking at Citi’s TMT conference in California on 6 November, said the company still needs to invest to meet customer demand, leaning on relationships already built with large cloud providers. Her remarks came in the middle of a week when American data centre economics were being repriced by the market.
The pressure is now symmetrical. Compute commitments set a floor under spending, and the cost of capital sets a ceiling on how much of it can be financed privately. A USD 11 billion first close at a reduced valuation is what that squeeze looks like from the inside.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original 36Kr report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://36kr.com/p/4058879839359873.