OpenAI is negotiating a funding round of up to $30 billion led by investors in the United Arab Emirates and U.S. investment firm Coatue. For the UAE, it would deepen a relationship with the ChatGPT maker that already stretches from investment funds to plans for an enormous computing hub in Abu Dhabi.
The $30 billion is the size of the proposed round as a whole. How much the UAE investors would contribute has not been disclosed, and the terms are still being negotiated. The talks could also bring OpenAI more computing capacity in the country.
CNBC reported the negotiations on October 22, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposed valuation is $1.25 trillion before the new money comes in. OpenAI is aiming to secure investor signatures by the end of next week, according to the reporting.
Another huge check before the IPO
That price is lower than the $1.4 trillion discussed earlier in the talks. Bloomberg reported the revised target on October 23 and said Coatue was in discussions to co-lead, with UAE funds and other investors, including BlackRock, also involved in the negotiations.
OpenAI declined to comment on the fundraising. Coatue did not immediately respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.
Even at the revised price, the sums are enormous. The company's previous funding announcement, on March 31, said:
Today, we closed our latest funding round with $122 billion in committed capital at a post money valuation of $852 billion.
The valuation labels matter here. March's figure included the money committed in that round; the new $1.25 trillion figure is reported on a pre-money basis. They describe different stages of a financing, rather than two directly interchangeable price tags.
The earlier round also shows how familiar some of these relationships already are. MGX was among the firms that co-led it, while Coatue and affiliated BlackRock funds participated. The new talks would bring more private capital into the business before ordinary stock-market investors get a direct opportunity to buy its shares in an IPO.
The UAE has more to offer than money
Computing capacity is a particularly useful part of the discussion for a company that needs powerful chips and data centers to train its models and serve customers. The reported UAE commercial agreement would sit alongside the financing talks, tying potential capital to access to more infrastructure.
There is already a much larger project behind that relationship. In May 2025, the company announced plans for Stargate UAE, a one-gigawatt computing cluster in Abu Dhabi. Its partners included G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank.
That announcement also included UAE investment into Stargate infrastructure in the United States. The relationship runs in both directions: building capacity in the Gulf while helping finance infrastructure in America.
The new fundraising would add to that existing relationship. It would also give OpenAI another source of private funding while it works toward a public listing. Bloomberg reported that the company has pushed its IPO plans to 2027, citing its focus on AI safety efforts.
Meanwhile, rival Anthropic's expected November IPO is approaching. Its reception would give other AI companies and their backers a fresh indication of how public investors value the sector's growth prospects and enormous spending requirements.
Customers are part of the calculation, too
There was a fresh commercial development alongside the funding reports. On October 22, OpenAI said Uber was rolling out ChatGPT Work to more than 30,000 employees worldwide, expanding from a pilot involving 1,000 people.
The service works inside ChatGPT Enterprise and connects with workplace tools to help staff research information, prepare meeting materials, analyze data and complete tasks across applications. Uber's rollout includes employee training, approved integrations and its internal library of AI skills.
Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber's chief technology officer, explained the company's aim:
As AI transforms how we work, we want to give everyone the tools to innovate, solve problems and help shape Uber's future.
The companies said they planned to share more information about adoption, use cases and measurable outcomes as the rollout progresses. Those results will give prospective investors something concrete to assess alongside the next multibillion-dollar funding announcement.