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OpenAI has held early talks with major investors about a funding round that could value the ChatGPT maker at roughly $1.2 trillion before an IPO, Reuters reported on September 15, citing the Financial Times. That would put the company about 41% above the $852 billion post-money valuation from its March round.
The larger issue is how much value frontier AI companies generate before public investors can access the companies in question. The question becomes whether the demand on the enterprise level and a historical boom in AI investment can continue to match trillion-dollar valuations by private investors as compute costs increase and markets continue to consolidate.
Investors, not OpenAI, started the conversation
The negotiations are still at an initial stage, and the value might change. As reported by Reuters, investors reached out to OpenAI instead of OpenAI being the one to start these negotiations. When approached for comment, OpenAI did not answer.
On September 12, CEO Sam Altman stated that OpenAI would not make an IPO in 2026 because of concerns over frontier AI safety. OpenAI and Anthropic have endorsed stronger regulations on more powerful AI systems.
From $852 billion to $1.2 trillion in six months
According to OpenAI, its latest funding round held in March netted $122 billion in the form of committed capital, resulting in a post-money valuation of $852 billion. Funding for the round was provided by Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, while its long-time partner, Microsoft, continued to participate in the funding. In addition, $3 billion from other investors were raised through bank routes.
At that time, OpenAI had shared that it was earning $2 billion of revenue each month, with enterprise customer generating over 40% of the revenue and the revenue forecast to reach similar levels by the end of the year.
Thus, the valuation of $1.2 trillion represents an increase by 41% in less than six months.
The private mega-cap club OpenAI is racing inside
According to Forge Global, Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI were able to achieve a market value of over $100 billion in a much shorter period of time compared to earlier generations of private companies. xAI took only 2.3 years to accomplish this feat while Anthropic took about 4.5 years, compared to about 16 years for companies established prior to 2011.
According to DefiLlama’s pre-IPO tracker, as of September 14, it has estimated a valuation of $1.48 trillion for Anthropic while OpenAI would be valued at $903.29 billion. The figures are estimates of their pre-IPO value, not the valuations set in their latest funding rounds.
It means that Anthropic is approximately 64% higher than OpenAI. If OpenAI would be considered at the proposed amount of $1.2 trillion while Anthropic’s estimate remained unchanged, the difference would decrease to nearly 23%—Cryptopolitan’s calculations show how fast another mega funding round could change private market predictions.
Cryptopolitan reported earlier that Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate has surpassed OpenAI, indicating that enterprise growth and future market share are increasingly being factored in by investors, together with model capability.
OpenAI vs Anthropic: AI Valuations, $100B Speed and 2026 Spending
A $1 trillion capital wave under the valuations
Goldman Sachs Research forecasts AI investments worldwide will go beyond $1 trillion in 2026, with $581 billion will be invested in the United States alone. Gartner expects the global expenditure on AI platforms and models will be as high as $64.25 billion, which is a 63.4% increase compared to 2025.
Enterprise AI budgets are coming under greater scrutiny, with increased focus on usage efficiency, cost control and measurable outcomes.
— Arunasree Cheparthi, Gartner
This tension is important. Expenditures on infrastructure projects may continue to increase even when the need for clearer returns arises on the part of customers. A survey carried out by McKinsey shows that 40% of respondents from big companies are actively implementing AI agents as opposed to only 22% in small companies.
The OECD also claims that hardware and data are largely concentrated in a few hands, while research by S&P Global suggests that economies that are key to the development of AI have surpassed the global benchmark rate for every month since the end of 2025.
Why the IPO may be a liquidity event, not a launchpad
Forge argues that for companies already worth more than $100 billion, much of the value creation now happens while they remain private. That makes an IPO increasingly look like a liquidity event for existing investors rather than the beginning of major valuation growth.
Anthropic may test that idea first. Reuters says it could begin marketing an IPO in mid-October at the earliest and complete the listing shortly before the U.S. midterm elections in November. If so, OpenAI’s $1.2 trillion talks are less about what an IPO might unlock than how much value private investors are willing to price in before one happens.
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