Author: Joanne

Editor: Xu Qingyang

The two most expensive financings in the AI industry are facing the same question: How high are investors willing to pay for growth?

On November 6 local time in the United States, OpenAI completed the first tranche of a new round of financing amounting to $11 billion, with a valuation of $1.25 trillion, but there is already a significant gap from the initial financing target.

Almost simultaneously, Anthropic, which is preparing to launch its IPO, is also facing investor skepticism, with some institutions believing its valuation of $1.5 trillion is too high and even requesting the company to further lower its offering price.

The timing of Anthropic's IPO has also begun to show uncertainty. Whether the planned roadshow set for next week can proceed as scheduled has become a topic of discussion among investors.

Both companies were previously viewed as the most valuable assets in the AI industry, but are now facing tightened financing conditions. This change involves not only valuation adjustments but also exposes an increasingly unavoidable contradiction between AI commercialization, computing power investment, and capital returns.

The AI industry is undergoing a repricing in the capital markets.

OpenAI's Financing Plan Continuously Shrinks

On November 6, informed sources revealed that OpenAI had completed the first tranche of approximately $11 billion in financing, with funds received the same day corresponding to a company valuation of $1.25 trillion.

This funding is only part of the latest financing round. OpenAI still plans to complete the remaining financing in the coming weeks, with the total round expected to reach $20 billion.

However, compared to the initial plan, the scale of financing has significantly shrunk. OpenAI initially hoped to raise about $30 billion, with a valuation target that once reached $1.5 trillion. Subsequently, the company adjusted its financing target to $20 billion, and its valuation was lowered to $1.25 trillion.

SoftBank and the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX are important participants in this financing round. According to previous disclosures, OpenAI has also reached out to investors such as Founders Fund, Coatue, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.

This financing round has a special backdrop: OpenAI is racing to secure funding before Anthropic goes public.

On October 19, Reuters reported that OpenAI was accelerating its financing pace, hoping to lock in institutional investors before Anthropic is expected to go public in mid-November. The two companies are competing for a considerable portion of the same funding sources.

OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar stated in an interview on November 6 that the company’s revenue grew by 70% in the third quarter, with enterprise sales reaching double that of the same period last year.

She also noted that the results of the recent U.S. midterm elections did not significantly alter OpenAI's planned IPO schedule, as the company still hopes to go public in 2027.

OpenAI's desire to complete financing as soon as possible is also related to its infrastructure investments. The company needs to prepare sufficient funds for data centers, chip procurement, and long-term computing power contracts, while also providing a more solid balance sheet for the planned IPO in 2027.

However, the $11 billion first tranche also brings a practical question: With a valuation of $1.25 trillion, can OpenAI continue to attract investors under the original conditions to complete the remaining financing?

For OpenAI, this round of financing is not just a simple capital supplement.

In March of this year, OpenAI had just completed a financing round totaling $122 billion, with a post-money valuation of $852 billion. This round included strategic investors such as Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank, with long-term investors like Microsoft continuing to provide support. OpenAI had indicated at the time that the funds would be used for model development, product expansion, and infrastructure construction.

In just over half a year, OpenAI's valuation has progressed from $852 billion to $1.25 trillion, still maintaining a very high valuation level among global private tech companies. However, the reduction of the financing target from $30 billion to $20 billion also indicates a change in investor attitude towards high capital input.

Anthropic's $2 Trillion Valuation Hard to Maintain

The shrinking of OpenAI's financing scale reflects the caution in the private equity market, while the changes in Anthropic's valuation are directly related to the upcoming IPOs of AI companies.

Anthropic has submitted listing documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to go public on NASDAQ under the ticker ANT. Previously, market expectations for Anthropic's IPO valuation once reached $2 trillion. According to previous reports on financing and listing arrangements, the company was expected to raise hundreds of billions through the IPO, even challenging the record for the largest IPO financing in tech history.

However, with changes in the market environment, the $2 trillion valuation target is starting to lose support.

On November 6, investor expectations for Anthropic's listing pricing further declined. Some investors believe that the $1.5 trillion valuation is already too high, even referring to it as a target that can barely be achieved. Others think that a valuation range of $1 trillion to $1.25 trillion may be more realistic.

This is a significant drop compared to the previous $2 trillion expectation. Based on $1 trillion, the valuation expectation has already halved.

Max Kettner, head of multi-asset strategy at HSBC, believes that a valuation of around $1 trillion might be a more prudent choice, helping to reduce the risk of extreme volatility in Anthropic's stock price during its initial public offering.

D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria also stated that the best way for Anthropic to achieve a good listing performance is to reasonably determine the issuance price, rather than blindly pursue a higher valuation.

The changes in Anthropic's valuation are particularly noteworthy because the company is not lacking in growth data.

In May of this year, Anthropic announced the completion of a $65 billion Series H financing, with a post-money valuation of $96.5 billion. This round of financing was participated in by institutions such as Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with strategic partners like Amazon also providing the previously committed investments.

At that time, Anthropic stated that its annualized revenue run rate had exceeded $47 billion, and the adoption of Claude by enterprise clients was accelerating.

From a private financing valuation of $96.5 billion to a previously anticipated IPO valuation of $2 trillion, Anthropic achieved a huge valuation premium in a short period. However, this expectation was based on the continuous high-speed growth of future revenues, the continuous expansion of enterprise clients, and the ability of AI infrastructure investment to yield returns.

Now, investors are beginning to reassess these conditions.

Investors Start Calculating Return Cycles

The cooling of financing expectations for OpenAI and Anthropic reflects a larger change: the investment logic of capital markets regarding the AI industry is adjusting.

In the past two years, investors focused on who could train more powerful models first, who could acquire more GPU and data center resources, and who could gain a lead in the next round of technological competition. As long as companies could demonstrate their technological advantages and growth potential, there was significant upward space for financing scale and valuations.

Now, this logic is being challenged.

Firstly, the scale of investment in AI infrastructure is continually expanding. Large tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are continuously increasing capital expenditures, with data center construction, chip procurement, and electricity supply becoming significant expenses for AI industry expansion. The computing power needs of model companies are intertwined with the capital investments of cloud service providers, forming a large-scale investment chain.

However, infrastructure investment does not necessarily bring equivalent income. Data centers require time from planning, construction to operational capacity; chip procurement and long-term computing power contracts also mean companies must bear costs in advance. If the commercialization speed of AI applications cannot keep pace with infrastructure expansion, the investment return cycle may further lengthen.

Secondly, the public market is beginning to require more sustainability from AI investments.

In early November, U.S. tech stocks experienced a significant adjustment, prompting investors to reassess the AI capital expenditures, data center construction plans, and future profitability of large tech companies. The results of the U.S. midterm elections also heightened market concerns regarding obstacles to data center construction. Local opposition to rising electricity costs, energy consumption, and land use may impact the approval and construction timelines of certain projects.

For OpenAI and Anthropic, these changes are not distant industry risks. Their business models are heavily reliant on external computing power supply, and the construction capabilities, financing costs, and capital expenditure arrangements of cloud service providers will affect the expansion speed of model companies.

At the same time, both companies face different competitive pressures.

OpenAI has a huge consumer base for ChatGPT and continues to expand in enterprise services, developer platforms, and programming tools. According to financing materials released by the company in March this year, it has weekly active users exceeding 900 million, with paid subscribers surpassing 50 million, and enterprise business revenue accounting for more than 40%. OpenAI also stated that the number of tokens processed per minute by its API has exceeded 15 billion.

Anthropic, on the other hand, is more focused on the enterprise market, with products like Claude Code driving adoption among developers and enterprise clients. The latest documents show that the company has over 11,900 customers who contributed at least $100,000 in revenue over the past 12 months, indicating a rapidly expanding enterprise client base.

The commonality between the two companies is that both need to continue to invest massive amounts of capital to maintain model capabilities and computing power supply. The difference lies in that OpenAI needs to further expand the revenue scale in the consumer and enterprise markets, while Anthropic needs to prove that its enterprise business growth can cover the costs incurred by long-term computing power contracts.

What the capital market now needs to see is not just how much the model capabilities have improved or how quickly the user numbers have grown, but also how much computing power cost is required for every additional dollar of revenue earned, whether long-term contracts can be fulfilled, and when enterprises can generate stable cash flow.

This is also why both companies can still attain trillion-dollar valuations, yet it is challenging to continue financing as previously expected.

For the entire AI industry, valuation adjustments will also change the financing environment for startups. In the past, possessing advanced models, ample computing power, and rapidly growing user scales could be important conditions for obtaining substantial financing. In the future, investors may place greater emphasis on the quality of enterprise revenue, customer retention, inference costs, and cash flow performance.

As capital no longer readily pays a full premium for distant growth, AI companies must also answer a more realistic question: How much must be burned to achieve technological leadership, and when can matching value be created?

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