OpenAI新一轮融资估值降至1.25万亿美元

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Lello in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, OpenAI is looking to raise fresh funding at a staggering $1.25 $25 trillion valuation. We have the details. Plus, Anthropic's looming IPO could deliver blockbuster gains for some of its biggest investors with billions of dollars on the line. And SpaceX is taking another step toward becoming a major US wireless carrier, eyeing access to at least 80,000 cell sites nationwide.

Well, we made it. It's Friday, and actually in the moment, technology stocks are higher, but headed for two straight weeks of declines. It's the first time we've had backto-back weekly drops on the NASDAQ 100 since July. Um, not as bad this week and not as deep a drop as we saw last week. Actually, a lot of the news flow right now is in the private markets. I want to get right to our top story and today's big number, $1.25 trillion.

That's the valuation OpenAI is now targeting in its latest funding round. Joining us with the details, Bloomberg News reporter Rebecca Torrance. Um, we had already reported that this round was underway. 30 billion raised at $1.4 trillion valuation. Looks like the valuation's coming off a bit. What else do we need to know? There are some new names in this round.

That's right. So, we are now reporting that CO2 management is in talks to co-lead this round. Um, that's alongside entities from the United Arab Emirates. We had reported that previously. The total round size is holding at roughly 30 billion as we reported at the end of September. Um but the price has come down a little bit. We're now looking at a $1.25 trillion valuation as you said. That's 150 billion down from uh the previous price.

Um which is reflecting some price sensitivity in in the broader markets. A lot of people at the time when we first broke the story were like well why is OpenAI doing this? Um aren't they going to go public? You know we have our reporting on when that might happen. It all kind of played out around OpenAI's dev day as well where we actually got to speak to to Sam Alman and and Sarah Frier about it. It seems like this is the investors wanting to do this rather than like OpenAI needs the money.

That's certainly how it's being positioned. Um I will say they do have, you know, these big compute commitments. The work that they're doing is not cheap. So they can certainly use the money. Um and this money would be sort of a bridge to their public listing. Um they had originally planned to go as early as as this year. Um but now they're looking at um next year earliest. Um so this capital would sort of get them to that next milestone um ideally a public listing.

They they'd already raised 122 $122 billion round earlier this year. And I think what Sarah Fry told me when I asked if they were doing a new round, which she did not confirm, but she basically said there's market demand to do one was a lot of that prior rounds capital sits on the balance sheet. Um let's frame this in in the sort of uh race uh neck andneck with Anthropic. What was Anthropic's last private valuation?

We just showed Open AIS and where are we at with all these IPOs?

Right. So Anthropic's last private valuation was $965 billion. Um OpenAIs was $852. So this private round for OpenAI if it does happen would push it above anthropic um for the highest private valuation in tech. Um that said, uh it looks like Anthropic is going to go public, um as soon as November, um in which case, you know, it'll no longer be a private company and and OpenAI will, you know, um indisputably be the highest value private company.

Rebecca Torren, Bloomberg News. Thank you very much indeed. So, Anthropic's upcoming IPO is set to bring multi-billion dollar gains to its investors. Iconic, an investment firm that owns a stake worth about $17 billion in the company, could see the biggest returns. Uh this is one of the most read on Bloomberg today and it's no surprise Bloomberg's venture capital reporter Natasha Mascarinus is with us. Like there are lots of big names in um in in anthropic.

Some of them have been there for a long time, some of them haven't, but you've just set out this wonderful piece.

Who's going to win? Who's going to who's going to gain?

I mean this is definitely a story of the biggest investments leading to the biggest returns which you know venture capitalists want to happen. Concentration is a word we hear a lot about this year. And in this case, many of the firms in our story, so Iconic, Sequoia, um, GIC, they made their largest investments of all time in this company, expecting and hoping for it to be its, um, you know, their largest returns. But listen, we have to give credit to the early stage firms.

Anthropic did not get institutionally backed until um, 2023 when Spark Capital led its round. it wrote its largest investment at the time 75 million and now we expect that um its stake to be valued at around 7 billion. So it's also you know how much you pay to get those multi-billion returns that matters.

We just showed you know some of the the backers of anthropic what's interesting is you know wow institutional money for the first time in 2023 wasn't that long ago. Oh,

but then like all these what we call strategics come in, right? Nvidia, the cloud computing players. Um, and then GIC, like tell me a little bit more about like the more recent history of who backed those big rounds.

It's rare that you see the biggest returns come for an investor that just backed it last year. I mean, in Iconic's case, it had passed on Anthropic before. Um, in GIC's case, um, I believe we reported that it's invested upwards of 4.5 billion in the company with its first check starting just last year. Uh, this is investors trying to get a meaningful stake in a short period of time. When the S1 does drop, um, I know we're both anxiously waiting for it.

We don't expect them to be in that 5% ownership bucket. And so, it was really important for us to get the story out before to understand, hey, they're not going to be listed in the S1 most likely. So, let's see what they have before then. And then so on Iconic, you know, we said $17 billion stake, but that is based off Anthropic's last private valuation.

Correct. Correct. Um we're going to have to recalculate all of this when we do eventually get pricing, but obviously

which we don't have.

We don't have um two trillion is something that's been reported and discussed. Um but that can shift and you know, I know we're we're actively chasing that.

Okay. Members, I wish you a peaceful and happy Friday of anxiety of S1's whether they come or not. Uh, another story overnight, SKH Highix scrapped its plans for a potential $10 billion US listing of its Solidine unit after it faced strong opposition from both regulators and shareholders. This makes it the latest firm to halt an IPO due to growing investor concerns about the AI boom in the tech market as the shares rallied after the announcement rising as much as 4.5% to shares outside of the United States.

SpaceX is seeking to secure at least 80,000 cell sites across the US to build a fourth nationwide wireless carrier. A person familiar tells Bloomberg the company is in lease discussions with Crown Castle, one of the US's largest owners of cell towers. This is the market reaction. Shares of Crown Castle surged on this report. There was movement in SpaceX. I saw some movement in some of the carriers as well. Bloomberg's Kelsey Griffith broke the story.

This all started um at SpaceX's first earnings call. It was like a big moment where they kind of dropped the bomb about what they wanted to do. Can you just go through what you're reporting, what you're explaining that their their latest move is?

Yes. Uh this detail is significant because it is the first indication that we have that SpaceX is really serious about building out