Money and markets

OpenAI and Anthropic edge toward trillion-dollar price tags

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise money at about $1.4 trillion, while Anthropic's draft IPO prospectus, seen by Reuters, shows a $42 billion loss for 2025 and a possible listing above $2 trillion; here is what those numbers mean, and what they don't.

By Chris · News from Sep 29, 2026 · 4 min read · Checked Oct 2, 2026

OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) and Anthropic (maker of Claude) are still privately owned: you cannot buy their shares on a public stock exchange. Yet both now carry price tags near or above a trillion dollars. What does a number like that really mean?

First, what is a valuation?

Young companies raise money by selling small slices of ownership to investors. Each sale is called a funding round. The price investors agree to pay per slice, multiplied across the whole company, gives its valuation: the total value investors are willing to put on the business at that moment.

A valuation is not money in the bank, and it is not the same as sales. It is a bet on the future: if investors think a company will earn huge sums one day, they pay more now.

OpenAI: from $852 billion to talks at $1.4 trillion

On September 29, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI aims to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion. That is a pre-money valuation, meaning the value put on the company before the new money is added; the $30 billion would come on top. For comparison, its previous round in March 2026 raised $122 billion at a valuation of $852 billion after that money was added, according to Yahoo Finance and Blockhead. By our arithmetic, $1.4 trillion would be roughly a 64% increase in about six months.

The key word is talks. As of October 2, no closed deal has been announced and no lead investors have been named in the coverage we could read. A separate estimate from Forge Global, a marketplace where existing shareholders sell to other investors, put OpenAI's implied value at $894.33 billion on September 21. That figure is based on those private trades, not on a new funding round.

OpenAI is not rushing to the stock market, though. In a Fortune interview released on September 12, chief executive Sam Altman said that "right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public", TechCrunch reported. Pressed on timing, he answered: "I would say not 2026." He tied that view to the industry's safety debate, which was dominating AI news that month.

Anthropic: $965 billion and a possible listing

Anthropic's numbers have climbed just as steeply. In late May 2026 it raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported. Only in February it had raised $30 billion at $380 billion, according to Crunchbase News. That is about two and a half times higher in roughly three and a half months, by our arithmetic.

Anthropic is also preparing an IPO, or initial public offering. That is the moment a private company first sells shares on a public stock exchange, so that anyone with a brokerage account can buy them. Before a US company lists, it must publish a detailed document called a prospectus, which sets out its finances and risks. Anthropic has sent a draft to US regulators confidentially, so the public cannot read it yet.

On September 28, Reuters reported that it had seen that draft prospectus. According to Reuters:

Anthropic made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. About $34 billion of that was an accounting charge, linked to the rising estimated value of earlier financing deals, rather than cash spent on the business. On an operating basis it lost more than $8 billion.
Its revenue grew about twelvefold in 2025, to nearly $4.6 billion.
It has committed to spend $518 billion on cloud computing and other infrastructure in the coming years.
The listing could value Anthropic at more than $2 trillion, and is likely to come after the US midterm elections in November.

Anthropic declined to comment, Reuters reported. As of October 2, Anthropic remains private, with no listing date announced.

Big numbers, big caveats

Three cautions to keep in mind:

Talks are not deals. OpenAI's $1.4 trillion is a target in reported negotiations.
Private prices are untested. Until shares trade publicly, a valuation reflects what a handful of large investors negotiated, not the verdict of millions of daily traders.
Seen is not published. Anthropic's figures come from a confidential draft that Reuters saw. The public version, when it appears, could differ.

What we don't know yet

Whether OpenAI's round closes, at what price, and who invests. The $1.4 trillion figure comes from Bloomberg's reporting on talks.
OpenAI's revenue. A reported revenue figure, including a very steep jump since July, could not be confirmed, so we have left it out.
Anthropic's listing date and exchange. Reuters says after the November midterms; no date or stock exchange has been announced, and reports naming one could not be confirmed.
Whether the public prospectus will match the draft Reuters saw, and whether investors will pay more than $2 trillion when the shares actually go on sale.

Sources

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