OpenAI cuts funding target by $10 billion, FT reports

Oct 30 (Reuters) – OpenAI has slashed the target for its latest funding round by $10 billion and is now seeking to raise $20 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The ChatGPT maker was earlier planning to raise $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation and was racing to secure investor commitments before rival Anthropic’s expected public market debut in mid-November, Reuters reported earlier this month.

OpenAI set a Friday deadline for investors to commit to the funding round, the FT said. However, the “first close” is expected to raise less than $20 billion after some investors reduced their allocations, according to the FT report.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

OpenAI was pushing to close the funding round partly to get ahead of Anthropic as the two frontier labs are tapping a similar investor base, Reuters has reported.

The reported cut in the funding target comes as US tech stocks suffered a rout amid growing worries over massive spending on AI.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped 2.9% on Friday and is down 7.8% from its all-time closing high reached on October 6.

(Reporting by Ananya Palyekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue)

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