OpenAI is trying to lock in commitments for a roughly $30 billion funding round at more than $1.4 trillion before Anthropic goes public in mid-November, with existing backers SoftBank and MGX in talks to join, according to Reuters. OpenAI wants the money committed before Anthropic’s IPO filings let investors compare the two companies’ numbers, which feels to me like they’re not very confident in their stated valuation. OpenAI is telling investors its annualized revenue reached $50 billion after it launched GPT-6 Astra and should hit $70 billion by year-end, while Anthropic was at about $65 billion by July. However, OpenAI reports revenue after partners take their cut, and it says Anthropic inflates its numbers by booking the gross value of deals made through cloud providers, which Anthropic says is standard accounting.
