OpenAI Completes First Tranche of $11 Billion Funding at a $1.25 Trillion Valuation
Reuters reports that OpenAI has completed the first $11 billion closing of its new funding round at a company valuation of $1.25 trillion, below the $1.5 trillion level it initially sought and only part of a funding target of up to $30 billion, with SoftBank and MGX participating. By comparison, the previous round announced by OpenAI on March 31, 2026 secured $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion, led by Amazon, NVIDIA and SoftBank. The article also notes that some investors value Anthropic's planned IPO at about $1.5 trillion, below the earlier expectation of about $2 trillion.
Why read this
AI score 82
Both the first-close amount and the valuation came in below the original targets; compare with the $12.2 billion round in March to gauge the shift in market sentiment.
Topics
Body
Reuters reported on November 6, 2026 that OpenAI had closed on an initial $11 billion in new funding, the first part of a round valuing the company at $1.25 trillion, citing a source familiar with the matter.
The amount raised so far represents only a portion of OpenAI’s original target of up to $30 billion. Two investors said the valuation had come down from the $1.5 trillion level the company initially sought, and that SoftBank and MGX participated. The financing remains an initial close within a larger plan, with the original fundraising target unfinished.
The funding landed after a month of cooling sentiment toward AI companies. Some investors valued Anthropic’s planned initial public offering at about $1.5 trillion, below earlier expectations of roughly $2 trillion. Those reduced expectations provide the immediate market context for OpenAI’s own lower valuation ambition.
Returning Backers and Existing Financing
In its March 31, 2026 funding announcement, OpenAI said it had closed a previous round with $122 billion in committed capital at an $852 billion post-money valuation. Amazon, NVIDIA and SoftBank anchored that financing, with continued participation from Microsoft. SoftBank co-led alongside a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. SoftBank and MGX were already part of OpenAI’s investor base, so their reported participation extends existing relationships.
OpenAI said the March round raised more than $3 billion from individual investors through bank channels, the first time it had extended participation through that route. The company expanded its revolving credit facility to approximately $4.7 billion, which remained undrawn at that round’s close. Together, those details show the breadth of capital channels OpenAI had assembled by March.
Operating Scale and Compute Demand
OpenAI’s March announcement also detailed the business behind its capital requirements. The company said it was generating $2 billion in revenue per month at that time, with enterprise customers accounting for more than 40% of revenue, and projected that enterprise revenue would reach parity with consumer revenue by the end of 2026.
Its cloud partners include Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave and Google Cloud, while its chip strategy spans NVIDIA, AMD, AWS Trainium, Cerebras and an OpenAI chip developed with Broadcom. The company also works with Oracle, SBE and SoftBank on data centers. That portfolio puts the fundraising in operational context. OpenAI’s stated rationale is that no single architecture can efficiently meet the needs of the entire AI frontier, making infrastructure breadth central to its deployment strategy.
The partial close and reduced valuation ambition show that OpenAI’s operating scale does not eliminate investor scrutiny. For the remainder of the round, the central tension is between a compute strategy that demands substantial capital and an AI market where valuation expectations have cooled.