OpenAI Closes Just $11 Billion of Its Round as Data Center Politics Reprice the Buildout
OpenAI has banked an initial $11 billion of a round it once pitched at $30 billion, at a $1.25 trillion valuation, while committed compute spending through 2030 reaches $856 billion.
The capital is arriving more slowly and more cheaply than planned. OpenAI has closed an initial $11 billion of its current round and may raise up to $9 billion more in the coming weeks, chief financial officer Sarah Friar told CNBC on Nov. 6, at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, below the $1.4 trillion the company had targeted and well short of the $30 billion it originally sought. The company says third-quarter revenue grew 70% quarter on quarter and enterprise demand doubled over the same period.
The backdrop is a repricing of the whole buildout. Voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development measures in 41 of the 42 local ballot questions held across 10 states, and the Nasdaq had its steepest one-day fall in 19 months on Nov. 5, wiping about $2.5 trillion of US market value. Friar said the result does not change the plan, telling CNBC that the company has to keep investing to meet customer demand, that it will keep raising capital, and that it will stop using non-disclosure agreements with public officials when discussing future sites.
The commitments are what make the funding gap matter. OpenAI's capital expenditure obligations on AI compute and data centres run to $856 billion through 2030, according to the Financial Times, against $122 billion raised in March that is on track to be exhausted by 2028 and negative free cash flow of $278 billion by the end of the decade. It has filed confidentially for an IPO and is targeting 2027, while rival Anthropic, with $33.2 billion of revenue in nine months, up about 1,200%, is trying to list first at a valuation investors now put at $1.5 trillion or below.
Hyperscalers are not blinking yet. Alphabet said on Nov. 5 that it will spend $17 billion on its first Wyoming data centre, and Bloomberg reported that ByteDance is weighing an expansion in north-eastern Brazil. But the marginal dollar is now more expensive: CoreWeave's bond yield has pushed above 16% and the neocloud complex sold off hardest in this month's AI drawdown, which means capacity still gets funded, at a price that now includes political risk.