OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lands $1.25 trillion price as Anthropic IPO buyers eye $1.1 trillion

OpenAI has a new price, and it is the kind of number that ends up on front pages: a valuation in the trillions, agreed in private by the investors who are paying it. The size is not the interesting part. Within weeks, the public market will put its own number on OpenAI’s closest rival, and the early talk suggests that number could come in lower.

That is the move beneath the news. Sam Altman has made clear that OpenAI is in no hurry to list. Anthropic has done the opposite. One of the two companies is about to be priced by strangers who can sell the next morning. The other has just been priced by the people who already own a piece of it.

What OpenAI raised, and what it wanted

The facts, as Bloomberg first reported them and as TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE and The Decoder have since relayed: OpenAI has raised $11 billion in a round that values it at $1.25 trillion. Investors wired the money on Friday. The round has not closed. OpenAI is still chasing more, and the total could reach about $20 billion in the coming weeks. In March the company raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, so the new mark is roughly 47% higher.

That is the headline almost everyone is running: the priciest private company in technology just got pricier. It is accurate, and it leaves out half the story. In late September, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was looking to raise $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion. The first close came in below both the size and the price. At the time, PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes said investors were offering around $1.2 trillion while OpenAI wanted $1.5 trillion, and that “nothing is priced.” The number that emerged sits much nearer to what the investors offered than to what OpenAI asked.

Who is paying matters too. OpenAI has not confirmed the backers. The Decoder lists Coatue Management, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and a consortium from the United Arab Emirates, and reports that OpenAI is working with investment banks to bring in wealthy individual investors. That is a wider net than the large funds and strategic partners that carried earlier rounds, and it was cast after an AI-sector selloff that forced the target down.

Anthropic’s IPO is the price check

Now the comparison that makes the round awkward. Hours before the OpenAI news, Bloomberg reported that some potential buyers of Anthropic’s IPO shares think the company could be worth as little as $1.1 trillion, against the roughly $2 trillion investors were said to expect about a month earlier. Anthropic is hoping for $1.5 trillion. According to The Wall Street Journal, several of its own investors do not consider that realistic, and one shareholder suggested something closer to $1 trillion. Anthropic filed its S-1 last week, is expected to start its IPO process next week and aims to list before Thanksgiving.

If the low end of that talk holds, OpenAI’s private valuation would sit above what public buyers are prepared to pay for its closest rival. And Anthropic will arrive with a growth figure that is hard to ignore: its filing showed quarterly revenue up 1,127% year on year in the third quarter. OpenAI’s own numbers are large but rising more slowly. The Financial Times reported that it ended the quarter with $50 billion in annualized revenue, up 77%, with enterprise sales more than doubling. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, has said growth slowed in the first half of the year before picking up after the launch of GPT-5.6 Sol in June. The two growth rates are not like for like, but buyers comparing the two labs will read the direction.

Sam Altman’s case for waiting

Altman has explained the wait in his own words. In September he told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell: “We’re not rushing into an IPO. I actually think that given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.” OpenAI would list, he said, “when we’re ready, which is when the business is ready, when we feel ready from what the moment is like in society with this technology.” He also said at the time, as The Verge recalled this week: “I think it’s also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public.”

Both statements can be true. The second now carries a financial edge it did not have when he said it. Staying private keeps OpenAI’s price in a room where it is negotiated, round by round, with investors who already hold stakes. Anthropic’s listing will hand the market a daily public reference for what a frontier AI lab is worth, and every later OpenAI round will be measured against it. OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, and the listing is now expected sometime in 2027; Brockman has said the company could be IPO-ready by then. The new money helps carry the costs until that point, against more than $665 billion in chip and data center commitments that The Information reported in July.

The test arrives quickly. OpenAI is expected to brief investors on its third-quarter results next week, according to The Information, in the same days Anthropic starts selling its story to public buyers. If Anthropic prices near the bottom of the talk, OpenAI’s newest shareholders will own a company valued above its listed rival, with no public price to tell them whether they paid too much.

Tags: OpenAI, Anthropic, Sam Altman, IPOs, tech valuations