OpenAI's funding target shrinks from $30 billion; Anthropic reportedly unlikely to obtain investment-grade rating after IPO

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Just moments ago, Silicon Valley's two brightest AI twin stars—OpenAI and Anthropic—both slammed hard into a wall on Wall Street.

OpenAI wanted to raise $30 billion, but investors were only willing to put up $11 billion—less than half.

No choice but to slash the funding target by a third.

The other one, Anthropic.

About to hold the largest IPO in history, only to be stabbed in the back by one of its main investors:

This chill had already spread at light speed from the primary market to the secondary market—

The Nasdaq, crashed.

At Friday's close, the Nasdaq fell 3.46%, the biggest single-day drop in months.

Nvidia, AMD and the entire chip sector plunged together, Amazon's cash flow was burned dry by AI infrastructure, and Intel, whose earnings blew up, plummeted nearly 30% in a single day.

A full-blown deep freeze: the Nasdaq fell about 5.3% over the whole of October, its worst month since March 2025.

Everything is just like the eve of the dot-com bubble burst 26 years ago.

Even Altman can't borrow anymore

Unbelievable.

OpenAI—the OpenAI of GPT-4 and Sora, the OpenAI led by Sam Altman—its funding actually failed??

According to the latest inside story revealed by The Wall Street Journal, Altman was still full of confidence this time, aiming his new funding round straight at $30 billion.

Remember, this is OpenAI. Over the past year, every VC, every piece of hot money, has been fighting tooth and nail to get in.

Even a fundraising superman as strong as Sam Altman now has to lower his posture, saying he will keep working over the coming weeks to "pass the hat" to family offices and high-net-worth individuals.

Something's off. Way off.

If OpenAI's setback were just an isolated case, then the plight of the other AI giant really sends a chill down your spine.

Anthropic is done for too

Everyone knows Anthropic, OpenAI's most hated rival, is about to IPO—and it could be the largest IPO in human history.

For this IPO, they drew up an extremely grand spending plan:

From now until 2045, they will spend more than $800 billion on computing infrastructure.

Where will all that money come from?

Borrowing, of course. To borrow that much at low cost, the company must have a good credit rating—the technical term is "investment grade."

It's like your personal credit score: with a high rating, banks are willing to lend to you at very low interest.

And then, right at this critical moment, something happened.

One of their main investors, private equity giant Blackstone, suddenly changed its tune.

Blackstone had been telling other investors: relax, Anthropic will definitely get an "investment grade" rating before the end of the year.

But now they're telling investors that, based on signals from the major rating agencies, Anthropic will likely fail to get "investment grade" after listing.

That means, in the eyes of professional institutions, your default risk is high. Many pension funds and insurance funds are by regulation simply not allowed to touch this kind of "junk bond."

The rest, those willing to lend to you, will inevitably demand much higher interest.

Think about it: originally planning to borrow $800 billion, with interest rising from 3% to 6%—what does that mean? The company's entire financial model would simply collapse.

Many plans may have to be scrapped and redone because of the budget.

I came across an analyst's post that put it really well:

Those companies that missed targets, fell short of expectations, or failed to execute are being punished.

"Punished"—that word is too precise.

Whether it's OpenAI's funding setback or the rating predicament facing Anthropic, in essence it's the capital market repricing risk.

People are starting to get scared.

Scared of this endless "cash burn," scared that the money they put in will ultimately buy nothing but a pile of expensive servers and a growing line of losses.

On the very day the Financial Times broke the news of Anthropic's rating problem, panic over the AI bubble swept through the secondary market like a virus—

The Nasdaq 100 index plunged 3.5% at the close, its biggest single-day drop since June.

But before, everyone assumed that as long as the story was sexy enough, you could always get an endless supply of cheap money from the capital market.

But now, Wall Street is telling you with actions:

The landlords have no surplus grain either.

To better understand this drama, let's rewind the timeline a bit.

Actually, even before the Anthropic news came out, market sentiment was already terrible.

Let me give you an example: Amazon.

On the surface, its AWS cloud service revenue surged 39%, strong beyond belief.

But on closer look, people found something wasn't right.

Amazon, which had $14.8 billion in positive cash flow a year ago, now has trailing twelve-month free cash flow of -$42.4 billion.

???

Microsoft, Meta, Google... these so-called "hyperscalers" have accounted for more than a third of S&P 500 capital expenditure over the past year.

And now you're telling us the giants have no money either???

But now, as they too increasingly rely on external financing, and as even a star company like Anthropic faces a credit crisis, everyone is starting to feel uneasy.

A groundbreaking technology emerges, everyone goes crazy for it, believing it will change the world.

Countless companies, cloaked in the aura of a lab, paint enormous pies, and even with not a cent of profit, their valuations soar to the sky.

Data centers and the like are also being laid down like there's no tomorrow.

Until one day, everyone suddenly realizes that these companies are burning cash far faster than they can earn it.

But the road to the future is never a straight line. It is inevitably full of bubbles, hype, and painful clearing out.

Today, the wall that OpenAI and Anthropic have hit on Wall Street may be the beginning of that clearing out.

It's over.

One More Thing

Honestly, sometimes I feel that history really is just a cycle.

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