Venture Capital

OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments for a funding round of about 30 billion dollars before rival Anthropic reaches the stock market, in a contest that could value the ChatGPT maker at more than 1.4 trillion dollars, Reuters reported on Monday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The timetable is unusually fast for a raise of this size, and it is aimed squarely at the calendar: Anthropic is expected to make its public market debut in mid-November.

Tenstorrent, the AI chip company led by veteran processor designer Jim Keller, said on Monday that it has closed a 1.5 billion dollar Series E funding round at a 6.2 billion dollar post-money valuation. The figure more than doubles the valuation the company reached in December 2024, and it ranks among the largest single raises by an independent AI chip startup this year.

China's AI labs are heading for public markets — and Moonshot AI just became the biggest test case.

Moonshot AI, the Beijing company behind the Kimi chatbot, has completed its final private funding round at a valuation of about $50 billion, according to Bloomberg, up from $31.5 billion this summer and roughly $4.8 billion at the start of the year. The company is now preparing an initial public offering in Hong Kong targeting the first quarter of 2027, which could raise up to $5 billion.

Waymo is borrowing money for the first time — a sign that robotaxis are growing up.

On October 8, the Alphabet self-driving unit announced it had closed a $5 billion term loan, marking its first debt financing. In a company blog post, CFO Steve Fieler said the capital would support the expansion of Waymo's fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the U.S. and internationally, calling the loan "an important step in our evolution into a scaling commercial enterprise."

The race to Wall Street between the two biggest AI labs is becoming a race against the clock — and Anthropic is sprinting while OpenAI walks.

According to reporting from the Motley Fool and Reuters, Anthropic could begin marketing its initial public offering as early as the week of November 9, with trading potentially starting before Thanksgiving. The targeted valuation approaches $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO in history, clearing the bar set by SpaceX's June 2026 listing at roughly $1.78 trillion.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is closing in on one of the largest private financings in the history of the AI industry. Bloomberg reported this week that the company is set to raise at least 80 billion yuan — roughly $11.9 billion — with the final tally possibly reaching 100 billion yuan, as it builds a war chest ahead of a domestic initial public offering. Reuters confirmed the outline of the deal with a person familiar with the matter, though the agency noted it could not independently verify the figures and that DeepSeek, Tencent, and CATL did not respond to requests for comment.

Nvidia is circling the open-source coding world — and it already owns a seat at the table.

The biggest AI scare of the week was not a model mishap — it was a spreadsheet. The Financial Times reported Thursday that OpenAI told prospective investors its annualized revenue run-rate was approaching $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion below the $70 billion figure that had been circulating among investors. AI infrastructure stocks slid on the news: Nvidia fell nearly 3%, Oracle shed close to 6%, and Arm dropped more than 6%.