OpenAI is asking investors for about $30 billion on a deadline set by its closest competitor, according to Reuters. The company wants to close the round before Anthropic’s expected public listing in mid-November, which could value OpenAI at more than $1.4 trillion — well above the $852 billion it reached in March.
SoftBank Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and other existing backers are in talks, and the round is expected to move faster than usual for a raise of this size. Anthropic, meanwhile, has seen its expected valuation slip to about $1.5 trillion from the $2 trillion it had sought after third-quarter results disappointed. On those reported figures, the two labs now sit roughly $100 billion apart.
Why the accounting fight matters
OpenAI deducts partner shares before booking revenue and has accused Anthropic of counting the full value of contracts sold through cloud providers. Anthropic says it follows established accounting practices. The distinction is not cosmetic: it changes the headline number investors and the public use to compare the two companies.
Anthropic has separately said it plans to file documents publicly with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 26, launch its public roadshow on November 9 and price the deal the following week, according to IFR. The company generated $16.8 billion of revenue in the third quarter, a 45% increase from $11.6 billion in the second quarter — a slowdown from growth of more than 140% between the first and second quarters.
What this means for the rest of the industry
Frontier model development now depends on securing chips, power and data-centre capacity at enormous scale. Anthropic’s draft IPO prospectus reportedly showed roughly $600 billion in future infrastructure commitments and warned that computing capacity could constrain growth. For anyone buying or building on top of these models, the practical question is not who is bigger, but which provider can keep serving traffic at a price that works.
Readers should treat reported valuations and revenue figures as claims made during a fundraising and IPO process, not audited results. Both companies remain private and neither has published a full audited financial statement.
What we did not do
We did not independently verify the reported raise size, valuation or revenue figures beyond the sources cited below. All figures come from reporting on private, unaudited disclosures.
Sources
- The CODEW — Daily News Coverage, October 21 2026
- IFR — Anthropic pushes ahead with mid-November IPO
- CNBC — Anthropic to share Q3 financials as it prepares for a potential IPO
- The New York Times — Anthropic Says Revenue Jumped 45% to $16.8 Billion
- Reuters — Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs
- Honest Fred — OpenAI Deprecates GPT-4o as GPT-6 Luna Rolls Out
