OpenAI advances roughly $30 billion funding round, aiming to lock in investors ahead of Anthropic's IPO

According to Reuters, OpenAI is accelerating a roughly $30 billion funding round, targeting a valuation above $1.4 trillion, seeking to lock in investors before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO; existing investors including SoftBank and Abu Dhabi's MGX are in talks to participate. OpenAI told investors that growth accelerated after the release of GPT-6 Astra, with annualized revenue already at $50 billion and expected to rise to $70 billion by year-end; Anthropic said its third-quarter revenue rose from $11.6 billion to $16.8 billion, but slowing month-over-month growth has raised valuation concerns. The two also differ on revenue recognition: OpenAI recognizes revenue on a net basis and has accused Anthropic of recognizing revenue on a gross basis under third-party cloud vendor contracts.