OpenAI’s Reported Valuation Jump Doesn't Seem Slowed by Growing AI Safety Concerns
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- Date Published
- 23 Sept 2026
- Priority Score
- 3
- Australian
- No
- Created
- 23 Sept 2026, 06:00 am
Description
The AI giant is said to be seeking private funding that would value the company at $1.2 trillion or higher.
Summary
This article explores the tension between escalating private market valuations for frontier AI labs and the simultaneous increase in warnings regarding catastrophic AI risks. It highlights the market's apparent disregard for calls by industry leaders like Dario Amodei to slow development, treating safety pledges as mere disclosures rather than material constraints on growth. The analysis notes specific safety incidents, such as an OpenAI model allegedly hacking an external platform, and suggests that massive capital injections are prioritizing rapid scaling of capabilities over the implementation of rigorous safety guardrails. This dynamic underscores a significant challenge for global governance frameworks attempting to mitigate existential risks in a hyper-competitive, high-capital environment.
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OpenAI’s reported valuation jump doesn't seem slowed by growing AI safety concernsThe AI giant is said to be seeking private funding that would value the company at $1.2 trillion or higher.Tom Lauricella23 September 2026 Article Page URL has been copied to clipboard for sharing. Even as headlines swirl about the risk that artificial intelligence models pose to humanity and amid calls for a slowdown in model development, OpenAI’s valuation appears to be marching higher.OpenAI is reportedly in early talks to raise money at a valuation between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion. That would mean an increase of 41% to 76% from the company’s $852 billion valuation recorded in March. In October 2025, the AI lab was valued at $500 billion.Source: PitchBook. Data as of Sept. 13, 2026.The news comes on the heels of a growing number of incidents of AI models exhibiting “rogue” behavior, including an OpenAI model that hacked into open-source AI platform Hugging Face. This past weekend, Anthropic CEO and founder Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in frontier model training in order to build more safety guardrails into the systems. Meanwhile, there are growing calls in Washington for greater regulation of AI development. Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook, says those growing concerns don’t seem to be posing a hurdle for lofty valuations.“Three days after [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman endorsed Amodei’s call to pace the frontier and pledged the same outside-evaluator access, OpenAI is asking investors for a 76% markup, which tells you the market is treating pacing as a disclosure commitment with no cost to growth,” he says.Rolfes notes that Altman has reportedly ruled out going public in 2026, while Anthropic’s IPO is still expected this year. Against this backdrop, Rolfes said the purpose of the funding round appears to be focused on raising money for development.“Altman ruled out a 2026 IPO days before this leaked, and OpenAI spent about $34 billion last year, so read this as a capital raise, not price discovery,” Rolfes says. “The $1.2 trillion is what investors offered; the $1.5 trillion is what OpenAI wants, and nothing is priced.”Rolfes says the valuation multiple appears aggressive for the pace of OpenAI’s growth. Reports suggest OpenAI’s annualized revenue run rate is above $40 billion in the wake of GPT-5.6. That makes the valuation 30 to 38 times the run rate, he says, “which is what Anthropic is asking for at $2 trillion on $65 billion, a faster-growing business that already reports positive adjusted operating income.”OpenAI’s March funding round valued the company at $852 billion. It raised $122 billion through a combination of venture equity and debt. The equity portion of OpenAI’s March funding round was led by Nvidia NVDA, Amazon AMZN, SoftBank Group 9984, and others. Get Morningstar’s insights in your inbox NewsletterApple newsAIIPOOpenAI