OpenAI's expected valuation after upcoming $100B funding

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Welcome back to The Pulse, where we dive into interesting AI stories and trends backed by data, all presented through simple visuals.

> early discussions to raise tens of billions (up to $100B) despite ~$27B expected net loss

> includes $10B from Amazon (circular chip-usage funding)

> Amazon: $8B already invested in Anthropic; OpenAI committed $38B AWS for compute

> current valuation ~$500B post $6.6B employee share sale in Oct

> target post-raise valuation: $750B (2x Anthropic’s) as IPO rumored mid-2026 for both

> almost retains Gemini 3 Pro’s performance but materially faster & cheaper

> priced at $0.50/M input & $3/M output tokens vs Pro’s $2/M & $12/M; available today

> significantly outperforms Gemini 2.5 Pro (also 3x faster) & posts benchmark scores comparable to all frontier models

> but tops the Pareto frontier of performance vs cost & speed

> Alphabet’s Waymo to be valued at $110B after expected $15B raise, bringing total funding to $26.1B ($11.1B so far)

> current ARR >$350M on 450K weekly rides (2x since Apr); targeting 1M/week in 2026

> 20M fully autonomous trips to date - 14M in 2025 alone - despite reportedly higher prices

> currently driverless in 10 major US cities; expanding to 20 more + London & Tokyo next year