[UPDATE] OpenAI Trims Its Price to Court a $30 Billion Round

OpenAI is closing in on a fresh pile of cash, and it has lowered its price to get there. The company is nearing a round of up to $30 billion led by investors from the United Arab Emirates and the hedge fund Coatue, according to reporting traced to CNBC and picked up across the financial press on Wednesday. The round values OpenAI at $1.25 trillion before the new money, down from the $1.4 trillion it had pitched to prospective backers, including BlackRock and the UAE fund MGX, earlier in October.

This updates our earlier report on the raise. The headline number is the same, but the terms have moved, and the direction is down.

A bridge, not a destination

Reports describe the money as an opportunistic bridge, meant to carry the company until a public offering rather than to fund it indefinitely. OpenAI filed its IPO prospectus confidentially in June and has not said when it will list, though people close to the talks point to 2027. The company reportedly told investors on Thursday that it wants signatures by the end of next week, so the final size and shape could still shift.

A separate arrangement for more UAE computing capacity is said to be under negotiation alongside the equity round. None of this has been formally announced, and OpenAI has not commented, so the figures are best read as reporting rather than settled fact.

The race to the window

Timing explains a lot of the urgency. Anthropic is aiming to go public in November, and OpenAI would rather shore up its balance sheet before a rival sets the market's reference price for a frontier lab. The softer valuation also sits awkwardly beside the questions already circulating about how OpenAI counts its revenue. A $150 billion haircut between pitches is the kind of move that tends to sharpen those questions rather than quiet them.