OpenAI raises $11B at $1.25T valuation despite midterm data-center losses

TechCrunch reports that OpenAI has raised another $11 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation. The round is expected to total about $20 billion. That makes OpenAI the highest-valued private company in the world. It also sets a public-market benchmark for Anthropic, whose IPO valuation is reportedly sliding toward $1-1.5 trillion.

The money is for compute. OpenAI's Stargate build-out needs tens of billions a year in data centers, power and chips. Reuters reports that the CFO told investors OpenAI will continue the data-center expansion despite the midterm results, in which voters rejected data centers in 40 of 41 ballot measures. That vote has become the defining political fact for AI infrastructure this quarter.

In the same week, OpenAI published a National Community Compact promising better terms for host communities (covered separately). Read together, the strategy is to keep raising money, keep building and try to make that politically acceptable.

Skeptics on r/OpenAI and Hacker News are less convinced. They argue that valuations are running ahead of revenue across the frontier labs, and that the $1.25T number assumes OpenAI can keep winning permits for compute. Watch whether the remaining roughly $9B closes at the same price, and how the Anthropic IPO reprices the sector.