“An ill-advised moment to go public”: OpenAI eyes a $1.5tn private round

“Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told Fortune on 12 September.

Now OpenAI is considering one more private funding round before its IPO, at a valuation of about $1.5tn. The New York Times reported the plan on 16 September, citing people familiar with the matter.

The round would roughly double OpenAI’s most recent private valuation of $730bn. It would make OpenAI the world’s most valuable privately held company. The people stressed that no decisions have been made and that plans may change.

Investors recently approached OpenAI with a proposal to invest at a $1.2tn valuation, according to the report. OpenAI believes it should get at least $1.5tn. It cites growing demand for its coding tool Codex. It also cites its latest models, GPT-6 Astra and GPT-5.6 Sol.

How the story broke

The Financial Times first reported the talks on 15 September. It said OpenAI had held early conversations with large investors about a round at about $1.2tn. The talks were at an early stage and the figure could change in the coming months, according to the report. Investors had started them. OpenAI declined to comment.

Any decision will depend on when OpenAI goes public, a person familiar with the talks told Bloomberg. The extra money could let OpenAI push its listing back by one or two quarters, another person said. It could also support more acquisitions. OpenAI has already spent billions on startups, including Jony Ive’s device startup io and the Python tools maker Astral.

The round would also let longtime backers increase their stakes before the IPO, the FT reported, according to Bloomberg.

OpenAI confidentially filed its draft prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June. It must now take care with securities laws when it shares confidential information with investors, the New York Times reported. Bloomberg said OpenAI is weighing legal limits on what it can share.

“An incredible balance sheet”

CNBC reported on 16 September that investors had approached OpenAI with proposals and floated a $1.2tn valuation. Some of them pitched the round as a way for employees to sell shares. But no formal discussions are underway, and OpenAI is not currently engaged in talks, CNBC’s sources said.

“We still have an incredible balance sheet,” OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on 15 September.

In August, OpenAI completed a secondary share sale of about $7bn. It let employees cash in part of their holdings, according to CNBC.

From 2026 to 2027

OpenAI had already shelved its plan for a 2026 listing to shore up its finances, the New York Times reported. In August, Friar told staff that OpenAI “will be a public company in 2027,” CNBC reported. She said it could list sooner if “our business continues to inflect.”

On 12 September, Altman ruled out a listing this year and gave AI safety as the reason. The same day, he backed a proposal to slow the pace of model development.

The numbers so far

OpenAI has raised more than $180bn since its founding in 2015, the New York Times reported. In March, it raised $122bn from investors including Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank. That valued it at $730bn before the new money and $852bn after it.

OpenAI’s annualised revenue was more than $40bn in August, according to the New York Times. That is roughly double its level at the end of 2025. Its quarterly revenue rose from $5.7bn in the first quarter to $6.7bn in the second. Its operating margin fell, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Anthropic’s IPO

A round of this size could let OpenAI overtake Anthropic, Bloomberg reported. Anthropic raised money at a $965bn valuation in May.

Anthropic has picked Nasdaq for an IPO that could come as soon as October, according to Bloomberg. It wants to raise as much as or more than SpaceX, which raised a record $86.3bn in June.

The New York Times reported that Anthropic could raise more than $100bn at a $2tn valuation. Its annualised revenue was about $65bn at the end of the second quarter, according to the newspaper.