Investors question OpenAI valuation

OpenAI’s new $852 billion valuation is facing pushback from some of its own investors less than two weeks after the company closed the round. (reuters.com) Reuters reported on April 14 that backers are questioning whether OpenAI can justify that price as it shifts toward enterprise software and tries to blunt competition from Anthropic. OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round on March 31 at an $852 billion post-money valuation. (reuters.com) (openai.com) The concern is not that OpenAI lacks users or technical reach. It is that investors now want steadier proof that enterprise products can produce durable revenue at a scale that matches one of the richest private-company valuations in Silicon Valley. (reuters.com) (openai.com) That debate sharpened after the company changed direction more than once. The Financial Times, cited by Reuters, said OpenAI redrew its product roadmap twice in the past six months as pressure first came from Google and then from Anthropic. (reuters.com) (channelnewsasia.com) The market OpenAI is chasing is not casual chatbot use. It is the business market for coding assistants, application programming interfaces, and other tools that companies buy on contracts and fold into daily work. (reuters.com) (siliconangle.com) Anthropic has become the clearest pressure point in that market. Bloomberg reported on April 6 that Anthropic’s revenue run rate topped $30 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, with more than 1,000 business customers spending over $1 million a year. (bloomberg.com) That growth has changed the valuation math for investors who back both companies. The Financial Times, as cited by Reuters and others, said one investor argued that supporting OpenAI’s latest round requires assuming an initial public offering value of $1.2 trillion or more, while Anthropic was recently valued around $380 billion. (reuters.com) (techcrunch.com) OpenAI has pushed back on the skepticism. In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson said the round was oversubscribed, closed in record time, and reflected investor confidence in the company’s direction, current business momentum, and long-term value. (reuters.com) The company is also arguing that the money is meant to fund scale, not just optics. OpenAI said on March 31 that the $122 billion will support computing infrastructure, research, and products it describes as core artificial intelligence infrastructure for businesses and developers. (openai.com) (cnbc.com) For now, the question around OpenAI is less about whether it can build leading models than whether it can turn that lead into a business that looks predictable enough for an $852 billion price tag. Investors are asking that question in public much sooner than the company likely wanted. (reuters.com) (techcrunch.com)