OpenAI seeks $30B at $1.4T on a $68B run rate, not the $40B reported

OpenAI is in talks to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion. The revenue base under that valuation is larger than most coverage of it implied. TechCrunch, relaying Bloomberg’s scoop, wrote that a 70% jump since July took run-rate revenue to $40 billion in August. CNBC’s own reporting from the same day puts the current run rate near $68 billion, which cuts the implied multiple from about 35 times revenue to roughly 21.

Bloomberg was first to report the round on Tuesday, September 29. CNBC confirmed the talks that day and added a caveat the other write-ups didn’t carry: the $30 billion figure could change, and no term sheet has been finalised. A source told CNBC the round is being driven by investor demand.

Where the $40 billion figure comes from

The gap comes from two separate numbers being collapsed into one. CNBC reported that OpenAI’s run rate was near $40 billion in August, and that a 70% jump quarter to date, including 20% in September alone, would put it at around $68 billion. So the $40 billion is a waypoint rather than the destination. Here’s what each figure implies against a $1.4 trillion valuation.

Run rate used	Period	Implied multiple at $1.4T
$40 billion	August 2026	About 35 times revenue
About $68 billion	Quarter to date, late September 2026	About 21 times revenue

CNBC’s source also said OpenAI’s enterprise business more than doubled during the third quarter. Consumer run-rate revenue added over the last 90 days beat everything the company added in all of 2025, the same person said. That matters because the site reported earlier that OpenAI told investors growth had accelerated after July without attaching numbers, while its second quarter showed $6.7 billion in revenue against a $12.3 billion operating loss. These are the first figures fixed to that claim.

The listing everyone is waiting on

An IPO is the reason the round exists. Bloomberg described the raise as a bridge to a listing, and OpenAI confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, CNBC reported. Altman told CNBC at DevDay that he doesn’t have a particular timeline in mind.

I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, via Fortune

That same Fortune interview, published on September 15, is where the safety line TechCrunch quoted comes from. Altman said it is “unacceptable to be taking a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade”. TechCrunch rendered the line as “taking like a 10% chance”, a wording Fortune’s published transcript doesn’t contain. We covered his decision to rule out a 2026 listing when he made it.

Semafor read the raise as a sign that a year expected to close with a bumper IPO market is stalling instead. It noted that Oura and SoftBank-backed SB Energy have both delayed their listings, and that analysts now expect the cloud startup NScale to postpone its investor roadshow, citing The Wall Street Journal. We covered SB Energy’s filing when it landed. Anthropic is still pushing for its own IPO this year, Semafor said.

One number nobody attached to the round sits in a Nature interview published this week. The OpenAI Foundation holds a 26% stake in the company, and it has so far committed to giving away at least $25 billion. At $1.4 trillion, that stake works out at roughly $364 billion by our arithmetic, which is more than fourteen times what the foundation has pledged.

OpenAI hasn’t announced any of this itself. Its news feed carries 1,240 posts and none of them mentions the round, so every figure here traces back to people briefing reporters. Until a term sheet exists, the $1.4 trillion is a number investors have floated rather than one the company has signed.

The thing worth watching is whether that $68 billion run rate survives a full reported quarter, because the September figure rests on one unnamed source and 20% of it arrived in a single month. Anthropic is still aiming to list first, and a prospectus would put audited numbers next to a claim that currently has none.