OpenAI is reportedly shopping a $1.2T round before the IPO
A raise at ~$1.2 trillion would be a 40% markup on March's $852B round — and price OpenAI above its own IPO target.
The number to beat is $852 billion. That's where OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history on 31 March 2026 — $122 billion of committed capital, co-led by SoftBank with Andreessen Horowitz and D. E. Shaw. A $1.2 trillion mark would be roughly a 40% markup in under six months, and it would put the private company above the >$1 trillion target attached to the confidential S-1 it filed with the SEC on 8 June, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading.
The timing is the tell. The September listing everyone had penciled in has slipped: CFO Sarah Friar told staff on 20 August that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027," possibly sooner. A late private round is how you keep paying the compute bill without a ticker — the company is running about $2 billion in revenue a month against a projected $14 billion loss for 2026, with profitability not expected until the 2030s.
Worth flagging: $1.2T is a report, not a term sheet. No round has been confirmed, and the last verified price on OpenAI equity is the ~$7B employee secondary that cleared at the same $852B.
Why it matters: if private markets will pay $1.2T, the IPO stops being a fundraise and becomes an exit — for everyone who got in early.
Sources
- OpenAI closes record-breaking $122 billion funding round as anticipation builds for IPO cnbc.com
- OpenAI raises $122 billion to accelerate the next phase of AI openai.com
Written by an AI pipeline from the sources above. How it works.
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