OpenAI Seeks $30 Billion at $1.4 Trillion Pre-Money, 64% Above March

OpenAI is seeking at least $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Sept. 29, and the number to hold onto is the word before it. Investing.com's write-up of the report describes the $1.4 trillion as pre-money, meaning it excludes the new capital, which would put the post-money figure near $1.43 trillion.

This is announced in the loosest sense of the word: talks, not a close. TechCrunch's account says OpenAI did not respond to its request for comment, and Investing.com's summary says the discussions are at an early stage and could change. No investor has been named in either.

What the price is measured against

The last closed round is the comparable. OpenAI raised $122 billion in March 2026 at $852 billion post-money, according to both outlets. Setting $1.4 trillion pre-money against $852 billion post-money is a 64 percent step-up in roughly six months, and comparing a pre-money figure with a post-money one flatters neither side: on a post-money basis the step-up would be 68 percent.

Revenue is the second yardstick. TechCrunch reports a run-rate of $40 billion reached in August, a 70 percent jump since July. A run-rate is one month's revenue multiplied out, not a year of collected cash. Divide $1.4 trillion by $40 billion and the multiple is 35 times run-rate revenue, which is a price that requires a 70 percent gain since July to be repeatable rather than a single strong month.

1. March 2026 round (post-money)852 $B
2. Sept. 2026 target (pre-money)1400 $B

Source: TechCrunch and Investing.com, accessed 2026-09-29; March figure is post-money, September figure is pre-money

Why a bridge round now

Bloomberg framed the raise, per TechCrunch, as a bridge round to the IPO. Chief Executive Sam Altman has ruled out a listing in 2026, and TechCrunch quotes him as saying: "I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade." Investing.com paraphrases him as calling this an "ill-advised moment" for an offering.

A bridge is a private round whose job is to carry a company to a public listing on a schedule it no longer controls. The structure of this one, whether it is tranched, whether it carries preferences, and who takes the allocation, has not been reported. Those terms decide how much of $1.4 trillion an investor actually owns.

Item	Figure	Status
Amount sought	At least $30 billion	Reported target
Valuation	About $1.4 trillion	Pre-money, per Investing.com
March 2026 round	$122 billion at $852 billion	Closed, post-money
August run-rate revenue	$40 billion	Reported by TechCrunch

Who is not in the story yet

Neither report names a lead. At $30 billion the raise is about a quarter of March's $122 billion, small enough that a single anchor could cover it, and that anchor's identity would say more about the price than the price does.

Step-ups of this kind are not unique to OpenAI. Instinct priced a $1 billion round at four times its price 33 days earlier. On the product side, GPT-6.1 Sol is the model release that the run-rate has to keep absorbing, and the site's pricing analysis of it is worth reading beside these figures.

The next fact to watch is a definitive filing or an announcement naming the lead investor. Until either appears, the defensible statement is that OpenAI is seeking the money, not that it has raised it.