OpenAI Fundraising Valuation Target Cut to $1.25 Trillion
nashnova research
OpenAI lowered its fundraising valuation target from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion after Morgan Stanley's pitch to private-wealth clients drew a lukewarm response — a directional shift in how the market prices top AI companies.
Why did the valuation come down?
Morgan Stanley and San Francisco tech fund Dragoneer pitched private-wealth clients, but the response was cold. OpenAI then cut its target from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion.
This means → the ask is now $150 billion below the price quoted to Abu Dhabi sovereign funds and BlackRock earlier this month.
A person familiar with the deal told the Financial Times: "In previous rounds it was a stampede. This time it landed with a thud."
Why are investors holding back?
Absorption fatigue: OpenAI raised $40 billion in March 2025 and a record $122 billion in March this year. Anthropic alone has raised close to $100 billion in 2026. The private market is running out of capacity to absorb back-to-back mega-rounds.
IPO wait-and-see: some investors said they prefer to wait for Anthropic's mid-November IPO before deciding whether to back OpenAI.
In plain terms = the money exists, but investors want Anthropic's public-market pricing as a benchmark before committing to OpenAI's private-market number.
What does this round look like?
The target raise is roughly $30 billion, with a subscription deadline of October 30. The final amount may come in below that.
Expected lead investors are Coatue and UAE-linked funds. The deal includes a preferential purchase right for OpenAI over new compute capacity from its Abu Dhabi partners.
SoftBank and MGX are also reportedly in talks to participate.
Is the valuation actually up or down?
The trajectory: $157 billion (Oct 2024) → $300 billion (Mar 2025) → $500 billion on secondary markets (Oct 2025) → $852 billion (Mar 2026). At $1.25 trillion, this round is still roughly 47% above the level seven months ago.
But the cut lands at a sensitive moment: two weeks ago OpenAI "clarified" its annualized revenue — a widely cited $70 billion figure was corrected to closer to $50 billion as of end-September, before the company said the full year would "meet or exceed" $70 billion.
This means → a valuation markdown, shifting revenue figures, and a broad selloff in US tech stocks over AI-infrastructure debt sustainability fears — all three pressures converged on this round.
What does this signal for the AI sector?
In one week, OpenAI and Anthropic together shaved roughly $650 billion off their respective valuation targets.
Neither company has locked in a final price, but the directional shift is already visible.
This reflects a move from "sellers' market" to "buyers watching and waiting" — and it may be the starting point for the market to re-examine the entire AI investment thesis.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。