OpenAI went out this fall looking for $30 billion and came back with $11 billion. That is the short version of what happened on Friday, November 6, when Bloomberg reported that the ChatGPT maker had closed the first part of its latest funding round at a reported $1.25 trillion valuation, with Reuters confirming the figure through its own source. We wrote last week that OpenAI had cut its target to $20 billion after a cool reception from investors. Now the first money has actually landed, and the gap between the ask and the answer is the story.
What actually closed
The $11 billion is the first close of a round that has not finished yet, and one source told Bloomberg it could total about $20 billion, with the remaining roughly $9 billion expected to close in the coming weeks. SoftBank and Abu Dhabi's MGX took part in the first close, according to two investors who spoke to Reuters. OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar talked about the round on CNBC on November 6 and confirmed the $1.25 trillion figure, though OpenAI itself has published no statement on the terms and did not respond to Reuters' request for comment. The numbers come from reporting, not from the company, and they could still move before the round closes.
How the round shrank
The round started out much bigger. In late September Bloomberg reported OpenAI was seeking $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, and two investors told Reuters the company had first aimed as high as $1.5 trillion. By October 30 the Financial Times reported the target had been cut to about $20 billion at $1.25 trillion, and the Wall Street Journal reported the next day that about $11 billion had been secured so far and that the response from some large investors was tepid. The $11 billion that closed on Friday matches that October figure, which means the round has been sitting roughly where it was for a week while the market around it got worse. The valuation itself is still a matter of some dispute: Friar told CNBC the $1.25 trillion figure is pre-money, the value before the new cash is counted, while the Financial Times has described it as post-money, and Bloomberg and Reuters have not specified the basis in their November 6 reports.
Why the timing matters
The close landed the day after the Nasdaq fell 5.52 percent in its worst session since April 2025, a drop that followed the midterm elections and wiped out trillions in market value across US stocks, with AI hardware hit hardest. Investors spent the week asking whether the AI buildout is moving too fast and whether voters and regulators are about to slow it down, and OpenAI's smaller round is the first hard number to come out of that mood. The comparison with Anthropic is hard to miss: the rival lab is heading for a Nasdaq debut with valuation talk sliding from as much as $2 trillion toward roughly $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, and both companies are now courting the same pool of investors. OpenAI is still worth far more than the $852 billion post-money valuation from its March round, when it said it had closed $122 billion in committed capital, but the direction of travel is clear. A year ago the question was how big the number would get, and now the question is how much of the number is real.
OpenAI got $11 billion, which is a lot of money by any measure except the one it set for itself. The round is not finished, the valuation basis is still disputed, and the next $9 billion will tell us more about investor appetite than the first $11 billion did. For now the message from the market is simple: the money is still there, but the blank check is gone.
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Author: Alan Ward
Seattle News Desk