OpenAI’s $30 Billion Round Ties UAE Cash to Gulf Compute

OpenAI is lining up as much as $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, with investors from the United Arab Emirates leading the round beside Coatue. That price does not include the new cash. A commercial contract for more computing capacity from the UAE is being negotiated in the same talks, and the company told investors on October 22 it wants signatures by the week of October 26.

The financing is being sold as an opportunistic bridge toward a listing. The size is still being set. The Gulf check is the part of the deal that will outlast the term sheet.

OpenAI Is Closing a $30 Billion Bridge at $1.25 Trillion

People involved in the talks say UAE funds are leading the round with Coatue, the New York investment firm. OpenAI kicked off the process after investors came to the company with proposals in September, then told backers on October 22 that it wants signatures in the following week. The lab confidentially filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June and has not named a debut date.

Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told staff in August that OpenAI “will be a public company in 2027.” In September, chief executive Sam Altman said “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.” The new money is the private-market answer to that pause: a large primary check that keeps the company off the public tape while it still spends like a utility.

THE TERMS OF THE BRIDGE

• The raise: Up to $30 billion in new capital, with the final size still open.
• The price: $1.25 trillion before the new cash, down from a $1.4 trillion pitch earlier in October.
• The leads: UAE investors beside Coatue, with a parallel commercial deal for more UAE compute.
• The clock: Signatures sought the week of October 26, ahead of a 2027 listing target.

OpenAI Group PBC, recapitalized as a public benefit corporation in October 2025, has already given staff a cash-out path. A secondary sale of about $7 billion in August let employees sell shares at the then-current $852 billion mark. This round is different. It is meant to put fresh dollars on the balance sheet, not to recycle old ones.

The Ask Dropped $150 Billion After Investor Pushback

Earlier in October the company presented a fixed pre-money price of $1.4 trillion rather than letting a lead investor set the number. Morgan Stanley and Dragoneer, the San Francisco tech fund, floated that figure to private wealth clients. Demand was weaker than in prior sales, and U.S. tech shares sold off as investors questioned the cost of the AI buildout. The working figure is now $1.25 trillion, a $150 billion cut.

Even after the trim, the price is 47 percent above the $852 billion post-money valuation set when a $122 billion round closed on March 31. That March round, anchored by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, remains the largest private financing on record. A $1.25 trillion tag on a company that is still private is a peak. It is also a concession.

HOW OPENAI’S PRICE MOVED

Some investors said they would rather see how Anthropic prices a public offering before writing another OpenAI check. That hesitation is the simplest reading of the $150 billion haircut. The company still wants the money in before that listing window opens.

Why the Round Is Racing Anthropic’s IPO Calendar

Anthropic, OpenAI’s main rival, confidentially filed its own prospectus in June, on June 1. On May 28 it closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion valuation. People around that process have talked about a public debut in mid-November, with formal marketing as early as the week of November 9 and trading before Thanksgiving on November 26. Anthropic has not confirmed a date, a price, or an exchange, and no public registration statement had been posted as a finished listing.

Investors have discussed Anthropic figures from about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. Those numbers are a market conversation, not a printed range from the company. What is firm is the calendar pressure. The same large funds are being asked to back two labs weeks apart, and a closed OpenAI round is how those checks stay put.

THE CLOCK OPENAI IS RUNNING

1. May 22, 2025: Announces Stargate UAE with G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank.
2. March 31, 2026: Closes $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation.
3. May 28, 2026: Anthropic closes a $65 billion Series H at $965 billion.
4. June 2026: Both labs file confidential IPO papers with the SEC.
5. September 2026: Investors approach OpenAI with new proposals; Altman calls a listing ill-advised for now.
6. October 1, 2026: SoftBank pays the last $10 billion of its earlier follow-on.
7. October 22, 2026: OpenAI tells investors it wants signatures the week of October 26 at $1.25 trillion.
8. Week of November 9, 2026: Reported start of Anthropic’s IPO marketing window.

A lot of the cash raised at this scale does not sit in a software margin story. It becomes halls, chips, and power. That is why a Gulf lead is not a decorative flag on the cap table. It is a way to pay for the next block of capacity without waiting on a 2027 tape.

MGX Already Holds OpenAI, Anthropic and the Power Bill

Abu Dhabi’s MGX is the named Gulf vehicle in the talks. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Ruler of Abu Dhabi, chairs the firm. In early October, UAE funds including MGX discussed putting in as much as $10 billion as a group, with BlackRock also in the syndicate conversation. Existing backers Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz discussed adding money, and OpenAI held talks with the University of California endowment. Those names have not been presented as co-leads of the live round. UAE investors and Coatue have.

MGX is not a new visitor. Its board, in a May meeting, reviewed the firm’s role as co-lead of OpenAI’s $122 billion round and called that check its fifth follow-on investment in OpenAI. On July 3 the firm closed Fund I at $49 billion. The same house sits in Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H and has held xAI, later folded into SpaceX, plus Databricks. Abu Dhabi’s media office said the October board also reviewed that Anthropic stake, a $5 billion Databricks round at $190 billion, and SpaceX after its $85.7 billion offering.

WHERE ABU DHABI ALREADY SITS

• OpenAI equity: Co-led the $122 billion round; this new raise would be a further follow-on.
• Anthropic equity: Participated in the $65 billion Series H at $965 billion.
• The other lab: Backed xAI’s $20 billion round and the later SpaceX combination.
• The power stack: Portfolio companies’ contracted capacity was projected to exceed 8 gigawatts by the end of 2026.

That last line is the part a valuation headline misses. MGX is not only buying a share of ChatGPT’s owner. It is already paying, through its companies, for the electricity and halls that make the models run. A commercial compute deal riding next to the equity round extends that landlord position. BlackRock’s presence in the early talks fits the same pattern. MGX and BlackRock already operate a large infrastructure vehicle with Microsoft and Nvidia.

1 Gigawatt of Stargate Capacity Is Rising in Abu Dhabi

The compute conversation is not a side letter invented this month. On May 22, 2025, OpenAI announced the first international Stargate cluster in Abu Dhabi, a 1 gigawatt site with 200 megawatts expected to go live in 2026. Partners are G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. The pact was built with the U.S. government and sits under OpenAI for Countries, which aims for 10 partnerships in its first phase. The UAE becomes the first country with nationwide ChatGPT access under that deal.

This is also the first partnership under OpenAI for Countries, our new global initiative to help interested governments build sovereign AI capability in coordination with the U.S. government.

OpenAI, Introducing Stargate UAE, May 22, 2025

The partnership is two-way. OpenAI described dual investments: the Abu Dhabi cluster, and UAE money into U.S. Stargate sites, on top of the UAE’s separate $1.4 trillion pledge of American investment. That pledge is not OpenAI’s $1.4 trillion price from earlier this month. One is a sovereign promise to put capital into the United States. The other was a private-company tag that has since been cut to $1.25 trillion.

G42, through Khazna Data Centers, is building the cluster inside a planned 5 gigawatt UAE-U.S. AI Campus. In an October 16, 2025 update, G42 said construction of the first 200 MW of the 1 GW cluster was underway for 2026 delivery, with civil work advanced and the first mechanical systems already on site. The commercial deal now in the funding talks is how OpenAI would take more of that capacity, or more like it, as the $30 billion lands.

OpenAI has said the UAE site could serve a 2,000-mile radius and reach up to half the world’s population. That is a distribution claim, not a revenue forecast. It is still the reason a Gulf lead is worth more to this company than another U.S. crossover fund writing the same dollars with no halls attached.

SoftBank’s Last Check Was a Different $30 Billion

Readers will see $30 billion twice. They are not the same check. On February 27, SoftBank Group said it had signed follow-on investments of $30 billion in OpenAI Group PBC through Vision Fund 2, in three $10 billion pieces dated April 1, July 1, and October 1. The last piece was paid. Cumulative SoftBank money in OpenAI is $64.6 billion, about 13 percent, on top of $34.6 billion invested since September 2024. That follow-on was priced off a $730 billion pre-money valuation and bought preferred shares that convert into common stock at an IPO.

AI is transforming the world at an unprecedented pace. OpenAI is a clear leader, with world-class technology and an unparalleled global user base, and we have strong conviction in its continued growth.

Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group, February 27, 2026 press release

Altman, on the same release, called SoftBank “the perfect long-term partner to help us maximize the benefits of AI for people at global scale.” SoftBank is also a Stargate partner. As of October 20 it was in talks, with MGX, about joining the new $30 billion round as well. It is not the named lead of that round. Coatue and the UAE funds are. If SoftBank writes another check, it will be a sixth layer on a stake it has already been building in $10 billion steps all year.

Amazon committed $50 billion in the March round, with pieces tied to conditions, and Nvidia put in $30 billion. Those suppliers fund the customer that buys their chips and cloud. Gulf capital now occupies a similar dual seat: shareholder and landlord.

A Public Listing Is Still Written for 2027

Friar’s 2027 line is still the company’s public timetable. Altman’s warning against listing now is why a bridge round exists at all. In February, OpenAI told investors it was targeting about $600 billion of compute spend by 2030, after Altman had earlier talked up $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments. By July that compute figure had been lifted to about $750 billion through 2030. The company booked $13.1 billion of revenue in 2025 and, in that February briefing, pointed to more than $280 billion of revenue in 2030. At the March close it was generating about $2 billion a month.

On April 29, OpenAI said Stargate had surpassed its original 10 GW U.S. target years early, with more than 3 gigawatts added in the prior 90 days. GPT-5.5 was trained at the Abilene, Texas site on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with Nvidia GB200 systems. U.S. halls are still the core. The UAE cluster is the first large bet that some of the next waves of that spend will sit outside the United States, under a partner that is also buying stock.

Microsoft remains a large shareholder and a cloud supplier after the 2025 recapitalization, but it is not the named lead of this round and no longer holds an exclusive claim on OpenAI’s compute. The people writing the new equity, and bargaining for the new capacity, are in Abu Dhabi and at Coatue. Anthropic’s marketing window, if it holds, arrives in November. OpenAI wants ink on a term sheet before that, at $1.25 trillion, with the Gulf’s power bill in the same folder.

The signatures are still outstanding. The size can still move. What is already on the ground in Abu Dhabi, and already on MGX’s books in both labs, will be there whether this round prints at $30 billion or something smaller.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a private financing that has not closed, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell securities, or a recommendation of OpenAI, Anthropic, SoftBank, MGX, Coatue, or any related company. Readers who are considering any investment tied to these firms should consult a licensed financial adviser or securities lawyer who can review the actual offering documents. Valuations, round sizes, listing dates, and compute figures here reflect the named company statements and people involved in the talks as of the dates given, and those terms can change before any deal is signed.