OpenAI cuts funding target from $30 billion to $20 billion as AI stock selloff spooks investors

OpenAI has cut the target for its latest funding round from $30 billion to approximately $20 billion, and lowered its valuation target from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion, according to reports from the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. The company had set October 30 as the deadline for investor commitments, and secured roughly $11 billion — less than half of the original $30 billion goal and well short of even the reduced target.

The scaled-back round comes just over a week after OpenAI was first reported to be seeking the larger sum at the higher valuation, a story this publication covered on October 23. The gap between the two numbers marks a real shift: a company courting investors for a historic raise one week found less than half its target materializing by the deadline the next.

Reports tie the pullback directly to a broader selloff in technology stocks that intensified this week. Disappointing earnings and guidance from Google, Amazon, and Intel contributed to a market-wide reassessment of AI infrastructure spending, and some investors reportedly trimmed their planned allocations to OpenAI's round as a result. The timing also puts OpenAI in a tighter spot competitively: rival Anthropic is targeting a Nasdaq IPO in mid-November, and OpenAI's fundraising push had been seen partly as an attempt to lock in capital and valuation momentum before that listing shifts investor attention.

OpenAI isn't abandoning the larger number outright. The company plans to approach family offices and wealthy individual investors in the coming weeks to fill the gap between the roughly $11 billion already committed and the reduced $20 billion target. Whether that outreach closes the gap, or whether OpenAI settles for a smaller raise at a lower valuation, remains open.

Even at the lowered $1.25 trillion figure, OpenAI would still be the most valuable private company in history by a wide margin. The company raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation, meaning even a reduced round at $1.25 trillion represents a roughly 47% valuation increase in under eight months — a pace that would be remarkable in any year other than one defined by an AI funding boom running directly into an AI stock selloff in the same quarter.

The episode underscores a split that's becoming visible across the AI sector: public-market investors have grown more skeptical of AI infrastructure spending even as private valuations for the companies building frontier models keep climbing, at least for now. A funding round that shrinks by a third in the span of a week is a concrete signal of where that skepticism is starting to bite first — at the margin of what investors are willing to commit, not yet at the headline valuation itself.