OpenAI Nears $30B UAE and Coatue Round at $1.25T Valuation

OpenAI is closing in on a funding round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, led by investors from the United Arab Emirates and Coatue, CNBC reported on Thursday. The company told investors it is "aiming to secure signatures by the end of next week," though the final size of the round is still being determined.

The $1.25 trillion figure is the striking part. Earlier in October, OpenAI had already presented a fixed $1.4 trillion pre-money price to prospective backers, including BlackRock and UAE fund MGX. The ask has dropped by roughly $150 billion in a matter of weeks.

The financing is being positioned as an "opportunistic" bridge ahead of a potential 2027 IPO, TechCrunch wrote, with discussions kickstarted after investors approached the company in September. The $1.25 trillion mark is pre-money, so the post-money number lands higher once the capital is in.

Alongside the equity raise, OpenAI is negotiating a separate commercial deal that would secure more computing capacity from the UAE. The company has told investors it plans to spend $600 billion on compute by 2030, a figure that frames why a sovereign-backed capacity agreement is being wired into the same conversation as the cheque.

This is the latest beat in a run of OpenAI financing coverage; two days ago we tracked the earlier $1.4 trillion pitch that this round now reprices.