OpenAI lands an $11 billion funding round, but has to court dentists for more capital

OpenAI has received roughly $11 billion in new funding, the first tranche of a round valuing the company at $1.25 trillion. The money was wired on Friday, Bloomberg reports. The full round could grow to $20 billion, with the rest expected in the coming weeks. OpenAI originally sought $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation but scaled back after an AI-sector selloff. Anthropic's valuation is also under pressure ahead of its planned IPO.

Investors include Coatue Management, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and a consortium from the United Arab Emirates. OpenAI is also working with investment banks to bring in wealthy individual investors. If OpenAI is already courting dentists to scrape together more capital, it tells you the AI funding market is either tapped out or too concentrated on OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic's massive B2B success with Claude Code is making life even harder for OpenAI.

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