OpenAI Is Seeking $1.5 Trillion Privately, Days After Ruling Out An IPO On Safety Grounds

In this storyOpenAI

OpenAI is in early discussions over a private funding round that would value it at as much as $1.5 trillion, four days after chief executive Sam Altman ruled out a public listing this year on safety grounds.

The talks were reported on 16 September and would roughly double the $730 billion pre-money valuation set in March, when OpenAI raised $122 billion from investors including Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank at $852 billion post-money. If completed, the round would make OpenAI the world's most valuable privately held company.

Investors approached OpenAI with a proposal at $1.2 trillion. The company is understood to believe it should command at least $1.5 trillion, citing growing demand for its Codex coding tool and its latest models, GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol. No decisions have been made and the plans may change.

In an interview published on 12 September, Altman said that given the current debate over safety, this would be an ill-advised moment to go public, confirmed that a listing would not happen in 2026, and said the company felt no pressure to hurry. The same day he backed a proposal to slow the pace of model development. His remarks followed the resignation of an AI researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic over safety concerns.

OpenAI confidentially filed a draft prospectus with the SEC in June. Earlier plans had pointed to a listing in the second half of 2026 at around $1 trillion, raising at least $60 billion. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told staff in August that the company would list in 2027, sooner if the business continued to inflect.

Annualised revenue passed $40 billion in August, roughly double the level at the end of 2025. Quarterly revenue rose from $5.7 billion to $6.7 billion between the first and second quarters. OpenAI has raised more than $180 billion since 2015.

The two statements are not contradictory in the way they first appear, and the actual tension is more interesting than the obvious one.

Altman did not say OpenAI should raise less money. He said it should not go public. Those are different propositions, and the difference is disclosure.

A company that lists files a prospectus, publishes audited accounts, enumerates its risk factors and reports quarterly. A company that raises privately does none of that. So the practical consequence of delaying an IPO on safety grounds, while raising at $1.5 trillion privately, is that the most valuable private company in the world becomes larger without becoming more legible to anyone outside its cap table.

If the concern is that the industry is moving faster than its safeguards, less public scrutiny is an odd remedy.

The pricing detail sharpens it further. Investors approached OpenAI, not the other way round, and they came in at $1.2 trillion. The company is holding out for at least $1.5 trillion. That is not the posture of a business managing risk in an uncertain moment. It is a business negotiating upward against an unsolicited bid.

Both things can be sincere at once. Altman may genuinely believe the safety debate makes a listing unwise, while OpenAI's finance function pursues the best terms available privately. But the combination is what the company will be asked about, and it will be asked repeatedly.

The arithmetic is worth doing, because the number is large enough that it stops meaning anything without a denominator.

At $1.5 trillion against annualised revenue of $40 billion, OpenAI would be valued at roughly 37 times revenue. For a company growing revenue at the rate it is, that is not absurd on its face. It is, however, a multiple that assumes the growth continues for years and that the enormous cost of serving it eventually stops rising in step.

The comparison that matters is Anthropic, which closed its last private round at $965 billion against a run-rate above $65 billion, a multiple closer to fifteen. Anthropic is also reportedly preparing to market an IPO from mid-October at a considerably higher figure. One company is asking private investors for more than twice the revenue multiple of its closest competitor, while declining to submit to the disclosure that would let anyone check the assumption.

There is a second detail in the reporting that deserves attention. OpenAI is said to be weighing legal limits on what it can share with private investors ahead of an IPO. That is the position of a company which has already filed confidentially and must now avoid selective disclosure. It means this round would be priced on information the public will eventually receive but does not have today.

For readers in India the relevance is indirect but real. A single private company absorbing capital on this scale is the clearest possible illustration of where global venture money has gone. India took 1 per cent of global venture funding value across the first seven months of this year. The capital exists in extraordinary quantity. It is simply concentrated in a very small number of companies, and the gap between them and everyone else is widening rather than closing.

For daily, sharp analysis of the biggest moves in the Indian business and startup ecosystem, follow StartupFox.