OpenAI valued at $1.25 trillion, as rival Anthropic nears its IPO

OpenAI is now valued at $1.25 trillion in a new round of funding that has raised another $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would make it one of the world’s most valuable companies, not long after raising $122 billion from investors in March at a valuation of $852 billion. Echoing FT and Wall Street Journal reports from last week, Bloomberg says OpenAI is still pursuing additional investments that could increase the amount to $20 billion, and that it had initially hoped to raise as much as $30 billion at a higher valuation of $1.4 trillion. That was before tech stocks dropped, and the results of the midterms showed how much public opinion has turned against AI companies and data center projects. OpenAI’s rival Anthropic filed its S-1 to go public last week. Earlier this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it’s holding off on its own IPO until it can make more confident claims about its models’ safety. He didn’t give a specific timeline for the IPO, but said at the time, “I think it’s also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public.”