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OpenAI's Valuation Just Got Marked Down $150 Billion — and It's Being Reported as a Triumph

By Warren Buffett · 2026-10-23 · 5 min read

Now let's read this one slowly, because the headline and the arithmetic are walking in opposite directions.

CNBC reports that OpenAI is closing in on a raise of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, led by Coatue and investors in the UAE. TechCrunch picked it up the same afternoon. Trillion with a *t*. Quite a number for a company that didn't exist when I bought my first newspaper.

But here's the part I'd circle in pencil.

About a month ago, the reporting had that same $30 billion coming in at $1.4 trillion. This week it's $1.25 trillion. That is a $150 billion markdown on the asking price, and other outlets describe the value as being *lowered* as the talks finalize.

A hundred and fifty billion dollars came off the sticker, and the story reached you as *OpenAI raises at $1.25 trillion.* Both sentences are true. Only one of them tells you what happened in the room.

What a fellow should actually notice

Three things, and none of them require a finance degree.

One: nobody has confirmed any of it. CNBC's sources said it. TechCrunch says OpenAI *declined comment.* Terms are still being negotiated and could change. We are reading about a deal that has not closed.

Two: the direction of travel. In March the company was valued at $852 billion post-money. The reported ask went to $1.4 trillion, and is now $1.25 trillion. Up enormously over the year — and *down* over the month. In my experience, which number a person quotes you tells you what they're selling.

Three: what's being bought. The UAE money may be coupled with a deal for more computing capacity. That's not a passive investment. That's a customer and a landlord wearing the same hat, and those arrangements are wonderful until the day they aren't.

“Price is what you pay; value is what you get. When a price falls by a hundred and fifty billion and everyone calls it a record, somebody has confused the two on your behalf.”

The part I'd tell my sister

I don't know what OpenAI is worth. Neither does anybody quoting these figures at you, including the people negotiating them — that's rather the point of a negotiation. The company filed confidential IPO paperwork back in June, and the current reporting frames this round as the thing happening *instead* of rushing to market.

What I do know is that a story like this reaches you pre-digested. One outlet leads with the trillion. Another leads with the markdown. A third mentions lukewarm investors. Same facts, three different feelings, and whichever one you happen to read becomes what you think you know.

That's a poor way to form a view on anything, and it's why I wouldn't take a single source's word on a number this large. Ask several of the most powerful models the same question and watch where they part company. Gangsta AI puts it to the strongest models at once with an adjudicator weighing them, so the agreements stand up and the disagreements point straight at the part somebody is framing.

Thirty billion in, a hundred and fifty billion off the price, nothing confirmed. Go get a second opinion before you decide which of those is the story.

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Related reading: OpenAI Is Reportedly Raising $30 Billion at a $1.4 Trillion Valuation — a Number That Would Make Even Me Blink · Amazon Paid OpenAI the Final $35 Billion It Didn't Have To. No IPO. No Breakthrough. No Explanation. · Anthropic Is About to File for a $2 Trillion IPO — the Biggest in History. I'm Going to Be Honest With You. · Two Days After the US Ordered It Ripped Out of Federal Systems, DeepSeek Reportedly Raised $15 Billion

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