OpenAI closed its first $11 billion round

OpenAI closed the first $11 billion tranche of its funding round on November 6, 2026. According to Reuters, citing a source close to the matter, that amount is only the first part of the round that values the company at $1.25 trillion. The company’s original upper target, meanwhile, was $30 billion.

In other words, one of the biggest AI companies is still only at the beginning of the biggest capital raise in its history. Talks are continuing for the rest of the round.

The valuation came in below expectations

According to the report, two investors said the valuation came in below the $1.5 trillion level the company had initially sought. SoftBank and MGX took part in this round; both are already among OpenAI’s existing investors, so no new relationship was formed, and the existing partnership was simply expanded.

This comes at a time when investor appetite for AI companies has cooled over the past month. During the same period, some investors priced Anthropic’s planned IPO at roughly a $1.5 trillion valuation, below the approximately $2 trillion figure that had previously been discussed. OpenAI settling for a lower valuation is part of the same mood.

The capital table from the March round to today

In the company’s previous round, announced on March 31, 2026, there was $122 billion in committed capital and an $852 billion post-money valuation. That round was backed by Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, while Microsoft also continued its participation. SoftBank led the round together with a16z, D. E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price.

There was another notable detail in March: OpenAI raised more than $3 billion from individual investors through banking channels. It was the first time the company had used that route. Around the same time, a revolving credit facility of roughly $4.7 billion was also expanded, and that limit had not yet been used when the round closed.

900 million users and $2 billion in monthly revenue

OpenAI’s March statement also showed the business model behind this need for capital. The company said it was generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, that enterprise customers accounted for more than 40 percent of revenue, and that it expected enterprise revenue to match consumer revenue by the end of 2026.

During the same period, weekly active ChatGPT users had surpassed 900 million, and the subscriber count had passed 50 million. The company describes permanent access to computing power as a strategic advantage, saying it accelerates research, improves products, and structurally lowers costs at scale.

A broad range on the cloud and chip front

The concrete reflection of that choice can be seen in the diversity of OpenAI’s infrastructure partners. On the cloud side, there are Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave, and Google Cloud. On the chip side, alongside NVIDIA and AMD, AWS Trainium, Cerebras, and the OpenAI chip developed with Broadcom are in play. For data center operations, the company works with Oracle, SBE, and SoftBank.

The company’s reasoning is clear: the view that no single architecture can efficiently meet the full frontier of AI puts infrastructure breadth at the center. But that breadth requires serious capital, and investors are now reading that equation more carefully. The first tranche falling short of the $30 billion target shows that operational scale alone has not eliminated valuation pressure.

Source: Unite.AI