The AI race has moved to Wall Street. According to Quartz, citing Reuters, OpenAI is trying to raise about $30 billion in new funding at a valuation that could top $1.4 trillion. That's up from $852 billion in March. The timing matters as rival Anthropic, which makes Claude, is expected to start trading on the stock market in mid-November. SoftBank, Abu Dhabi's MGX, and other existing backers are reportedly negotiating to join the round.

Both companies are chasing the same big-money investors, such as sovereign wealth funds. Some investors think OpenAI wants to lock in cash before that money goes to Anthropic's IPO. OpenAI says its annualized revenue hit $50 billion after launching GPT-6 Astra and should reach $70 billion by year-end. Anthropic was at about $65 billion annualized in July, and its third-quarter revenue rose to $16.8 billion. But those numbers came in below expectations, so some investors are pushing for a valuation closer to $1.5 trillion instead of the $2 trillion Anthropic wants.

There's also a fight over how revenue is counted. OpenAI says Anthropic inflates its numbers by counting the full value of deals sold through cloud partners, and Anthropic says its accounting follows standard practice. Once Anthropic files public financials, investors will compare the two side by side, and OpenAI reportedly wants to set its own price before that happens. OpenAI isn't planning to go public until 2027, and Sam Altman has ruled out a 2026 listing.