Credit: Henry Franklin via Shutterstock OpenAI is in talks with UAE funds including MGX, which may put in as much as $10B together, and with BlackRock, to anchor a $30B round at a $1.4T valuation it is presenting as a fixed price without a lead investor. The EU’s AI gigafactory programme carries the same headline number with about EUR 1B of public money actually committed. OpenAI is asking funds in the United Arab Emirates and BlackRock for $30B at a price it set itself. No lead investor has been chosen.
Europe’s AI programme carrying the same headline number has about EUR 1B actually committed. Abu Dhabi’s MGX is discussing a syndicate of UAE funds worth as much as $10B, with BlackRock alongside it, as Bloomberg reported. OpenAI and BlackRock declined to comment and MGX did not respond. The round is unsettled and the details could change.
The valuation is about $1.4T before the money goes in. OpenAI last raised $122B in March, at $852B including the cash. That part is five days old. We reported the $30B target and the price last week without the names attached.
What is new is who is being asked, and how. Investors normally submit terms and a lead negotiates the valuation with the company. OpenAI has also pushed its listing back to next year at the earliest, citing its focus on AI safety. OpenAI is presenting the figure as set.
MGX and BlackRock already run a $30B infrastructure vehicle together with Microsoft and Nvidia, so the pairing is not a coincidence. MGX raised close to $50B this year and already holds stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. It is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, with Mubadala and G42 as founding partners. The University of California’s endowment has held talks about taking part, as have the existing investors Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Thrive declined to comment and the other two did not respond. Europe has a thirty billion number too, and it does not mean the same thing. The EU opened bidding in July for seven AI gigafactories at EUR 30B, of which roughly EUR 1B of public money is actually committed. About EUR 10B was to come from the EU and member states, and EUR 20B from the private sector.
The rest waits on a future budget round. Each site is meant to hold at least 100,000 AI chips, with construction beginning in early 2027 and the first facilities running by mid-2028. Interest had already fallen from about 70 consortia to ten by June, with Deutsche Telekom wanting demand guarantees before taking part and Telefonica weighing a smaller stake.
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