OpenAI Raises Less Than Half of $30 Billion Target As Wall Street Jitters Grow

You may not like the message but you can't afford to ignore the signals. 

In the space of two days, a significant tech sell-off raises further fears about the stability of the AI boom and then OpenAI is reported to have raised less than half of the $30 billion funding round it had touted as evidence of its strength and a threat to Anthropic. Basically, the markets are signaling that they no longer buy the insane numbers being put up by the AI hype machine. It is not clear what follows - and this does not mean that AI is over - but it does suggest that a more realistic set of expectations lies in store for AI's growth to continue. JL

Berber Jin reports in the Wall Street Journal:

OpenAI has raised less than half of the $30 billion it targeted for its latest funding round, with market jitters over the AI trade dampening investor appetite. After receiving tepid interest from some large investors, OpenAI has so far secured $11 billion in commitments for the new financing. The deal values the company at $1.25 trillion—less than the $1.4 trillion valuation that it had earlier hoped to achieve. The fundraising hiccups come as OpenAI prepares to go public early next year, and amid a brutal tech selloff tied to disappointing earnings results from giants including Google, Amazon and Intel. Investors have recently grown more nervous about funding the AI boom and have grown pickier about which companies they back—and on what terms.

OpenAI has raised less than half of the $30 billion it had initially targeted for its latest funding round, with market jitters over the AI trade dampening investor appetite for one of the industry’s biggest names. 

After receiving tepid interest from some large investors, OpenAI has so far secured roughly $11 billion in commitments for the new financing, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal values the company at $1.25 trillion—less than the $1.4 trillion valuation that it had earlier hoped to achieve.

The fundraising hiccups come as OpenAI prepares to go public as soon as early next year, and amid a brutal tech selloff tied to disappointing earnings results from giants including Google, Amazon and Intel. Investors have recently grown more nervous about funding the artificial-intelligence boom and have grown pickier about which companies they back—and on what terms.

OpenAI told shareholders it expects to try to raise more money for the round in the coming weeks and target family offices and high net-worth individuals, the people said. The maker of ChatGPT and Codex is now hoping to raise up to $20 billion, one of the people said.

The Financial Times earlier reported that OpenAI had cut its funding target.

OpenAI is in the middle of a push to accelerate revenue growth to catch up to its chief rival Anthropic, which became the front-runner in the AI boom thanks to the explosive growth of its coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic earlier this week released paperwork for its public listing, expected for next month, that showed explosive revenue growth in recent quarters. 

Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion from the first to the second quarter, while OpenAI grew sales by roughly 18% over the same time period to $6.7 billion. Anthropic achieved a small operating profit in the second quarter, while OpenAI’s operating losses deepened over the same time period, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Third-party data shows OpenAI recently took back some market share from Anthropic after cutting the prices of its latest models.