OpenAI Eyes $1.2 Trillion Valuation in Pre-IPO Funding Round

The artificial intelligence (AI) startup has held early discussions with investors about a private funding round ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO), according to a Financial Times (FT) report Tuesday (Sept. 15) citing sources familiar with the matter.

The ChatGPT maker raised $122 billion at $852 billion in March, and filed confidentially for its IPO in June, though when that listing will happen remains unclear. The decision to proceed with this new funding round would depend on when OpenAI chooses to go public, said one of the sources, who added that the talks were initiated by investors, not the company.

PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not received a reply. The company declined to comment when reached by the FT.

The FT notes that OpenAI hopes to leverage an uptick in demand for its products in the wake of its latest model roll-outs: GPT-5.6 in July and Astra earlier this month.

Those models have fueled the company’s revenue growth following a relatively slow start to the year, which saw rival Anthropic overtake OpenAI in terms of valuation, the report added.