OpenAI raises $11 billion, but at a lower price than it wanted

OpenAI got its money, but not on the terms it first wanted. About $11 billion reached the company by Friday, November 6, 2026, people familiar with the deal said. It is the first part of a funding round that values OpenAI at $1.25 trillion. Press reports said the company first sought $30 billion or more at $1.4 trillion.

What changed

The $11 billion is about 37% of the original target. The price is also lower than the $1.4 trillion first reported. Two investors put the first ask even higher, at $1.5 trillion. CFO Sarah Friar disputed that, saying the higher figure started with a media report and never came from OpenAI. SoftBank and Abu Dhabi's MGX took part.

The $1.25 trillion is a pre-money value, meaning the value before the new cash is counted. Friar confirmed it in a TV interview. OpenAI declined to comment on the funding.

What OpenAI says about its business

• Business grew 70% quarter over quarter in the third quarter
• Enterprise business doubled
• Revenue splits about 50% each between consumer and enterprise
• 1.2 billion weekly ChatGPT users
• Ads run rate of $1 billion by August

Friar gave no revenue dollar figures. In March, OpenAI raised $122 billion at $852 billion. She called the new price almost 50% higher. The math works out to roughly 46.7%, but that is approximate because the March basis is unclear.

Who it affects

Anyone who owns Microsoft or NVIDIA, directly or through a fund, has a stake in this. Both depend on OpenAI's ability to pay for its plans. NVIDIA says OpenAI's existing and planned commitments add up to about 12 gigawatts of its computing power. Management also said frontier labs are growing faster than their balance sheets and credit profiles can support.

Microsoft looks less exposed. Gains on its OpenAI stake added $207 million to net income in the September quarter, against $3.1 billion in net losses a year earlier. A smaller valuation rise means smaller future gains, but that is minor next to 48% growth in its Azure cloud business. NVIDIA is more exposed to how well the labs can raise money.

What is not known yet

The rest of the round has not closed. It could lift the total to as much as $20 billion, and a separate report put the follow-on at up to another $9 billion. Lead investors, terms and how the money will be used were not disclosed.

What happens next

Two events will test the story. One is whether the round reaches $20 billion. The other is NVIDIA's earnings on Tuesday, November 17, when it needs to meet its guidance of $108.0 billion in third-quarter revenue. Anthropic, a rival, plans to list on Nasdaq in mid-November. Some investors now value it at about $1.5 trillion, down from roughly $2 trillion. A weak debut could weigh on both labs.