OpenAI has reduced the valuation it is seeking in talks with investors by $150bn (£112bn), lowering the figure from $1.4tn to $1.25tn after pushback, according to the Financial Times.
The reduction comes as investors weigh the cost of sustaining the artificial intelligence boom, with more than $1tn (£746bn) wiped off the value of US tech stocks yesterday.
OpenAI is looking to raise $30bn before a stock market listing next year. Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, told employees in August that the ChatGPT maker “will be a public company in 2027”.
The discussions began after investors approached OpenAI with proposals last month. Coatue, the American investment group, and investors from the United Arab Emirates are in discussion to lead the new round, according to the Financial Times.
A valuation of $1.25tn would still represent a 47 per cent increase on the $852bn at which OpenAI was valued when it closed a record $122bn funding round in March. The company, which charges subscriptions and sells advertising on its ChatGPT chatbot, was valued at $500bn in October 2025, when a staff share sale took it past SpaceX as the world’s most valuable start-up.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said last month that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public”.
OpenAI declined to comment.
The fall in US tech stocks yesterday followed a statement from Meta that it needed to raise “hundreds of billions of dollars” to sustain its AI investment. The Facebook owner has already committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data centres and computing capacity.
Markets were also unsettled by Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, who warned that a “scarcity of capital” was hampering the rollout of AI.
Concern about the sustainability of the AI boom led to a sell-off in Asia this morning. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell by as much as 2.3 per cent and was down more than 4 per cent on the week. A rise in the oil price to a five-month high added to the pressure on markets.
Dan Ives, a partner at Yorkville Ives, said in a note to clients that he was still backing AI to deliver, but pointed to economic and geopolitical uncertainty. “This will not be the last jittery moment,” he wrote.
“Oil, a 10-year [US bond yield] at 5pc, the midterms in less than two weeks, the Fed path, and the next headline out of the Middle East or the credit markets can each set off another white knuckle day, and the AI revolution names will be the first thing sold every time on the risk-off move.”
Expectations for the valuation of Anthropic, OpenAI’s main competitor, are also being lowered ahead of its own planned flotation.
Anthropic filed its prospectus confidentially with US regulators in June and is meeting prospective investors ahead of a listing expected in November. Investors are reported to have discussed valuing the company at about $1.5tn, down from the $2tn that had previously been expected.
The lower figure comes as Anthropic’s revenue growth slows. Financials shared with investors are said to have shown the company lost $80bn in the first half of this year.
