OpenAI Reportedly Nears $30 Billion Round at $1.25 Trillion Valuation

Reports say the proposed funding would make OpenAI the most valuable private company ever. Anthropic’s agent launch, Canva’s new image model and AI-linked cyberattacks also make news.

OpenAI reportedly nears $30 billion funding round

OpenAI is reportedly negotiating a roughly $30 billion funding round led by investors from the United Arab Emirates, with Coatue also expected to join. The proposed round would value the company at $1.25 trillion before the investment, up from $852 billion in March, when OpenAI raised $122 billion from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia. SiliconANGLE and TechCrunch report that this valuation would make OpenAI the most valuable private company ever, and they note that the terms are still being negotiated and could change.

OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork in June. CFO Sarah Friar told staff in August that the company would go public in 2027, but CEO Sam Altman later called an IPO this year “ill-advised.” Anthropic, which raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation, is reportedly seeking a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion for its own IPO, and many observers see its plans as further along.

Anthropic introduces Claude Duet agent

Anthropic has put Claude Duet into research preview. Built on Claude Opus 5.5, the agent is aimed at professionals and small businesses, rather than personal errands. It sends a morning brief, works in the background on its own virtual machine and contacts users when something needs approval.

Duet connects to more than 6,000 plug-ins in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack and Shopify. Anthropic is positioning the always-on agent against Grok Bot, Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots.

Canva releases its first in-house image model

Canva Craft, the company’s first in-house image model, is available to all users through Dream Lab and the public API. The model plans a layout and text before generating an image, and can produce images at up to 2K resolution in more than 30 aspect ratios.

Canva says Craft can render text in 55 languages and was trained mainly on millions of design templates rather than photographs.

SpaceX and Tesla form committees to discuss merger

SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss a merger. Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s earnings call that there was “a lot of merit to combining” the companies, framing the idea around cooperation on what he called “superintelligence software.”

SpaceX reported $7.56 billion in third-quarter revenue from its superintelligence division. Revenue in its SI solutions and infrastructure subcategory rose to $7 billion, more than three times the prior quarter, with $608 million of that coming from Cursor.

Researchers report AI-assisted vulnerability discovery

Cybersecurity researchers, including Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green, have spent the past month warning that AI tools are helping uncover serious software vulnerabilities. The flashpoint is PHP2Shell, a flaw found using AI by researchers from Wiz, Calif and OpenAI.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said exploit attempts rose from thousands in the 10 hours before the public announcement to millions not long after. Cloudflare measured the surge; the reporting cautioned against treating apocalyptic claims as evidence that AI is sentient or agents have gone rogue.

Sources

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