OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Investors are eager to pour more funds into the ChatGPT maker ahead of its anticipated public market debut next year. While Anthropic momentarily outpaced OpenAI at the start of the year, recent strategic refocus on key areas like coding has fueled a 70% jump in run-rate revenue since July, reaching $40 billion in August, according to the report.

The company previously raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation. That funding round was supposed to be its last private raise before an IPO, which had been, until recently, expected to take place this year. However, CEO Sam Altman has now ruled out a public debut in 2026 to prioritize AI safety first.

“I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade,” he recently told Fortune, in response to warnings from safety researchers about AI posing an existential risk to humanity.

The new fundraising, if it transpires, will serve as a bridge round to the IPO, according to Bloomberg.

OpenAI didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

TechCrunch Disrupt is where the tech community comes together to build, debate, and connect. And during Disrupt Week, that conversation doesn’t stop when the doors to Moscone West close.

Our Side Events program brings founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders together across San Francisco for everything from intimate roundtables and founder gatherings to happy hours, dinners, workshops, and community meetups.

Whether you’re looking to make a few new connections, find your next collaborator, go deep on a specific industry, or just get out of conference mode for a minute, there’s a lot happening beyond the show floor.

Explore the 2026 Side Events, and find your people.

More Side Events

Pursuit of Happiness: Revolutionary Demonstration of Whitney Electrolarynx by Uhura Bionics

October 7 | 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. PT

Experience a live demonstration of voice-restoration technology as Uhura Bionics co-founder Konrad Zieliński showcases the Whitney Electrolarynx for a U.S. audience. The event explores how technology can help people reclaim their voices and agency following cancer treatment.
Hosted by: Uhura Bionics
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Find the 10x Opportunity Hiding in Your Product

October 10 | 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PT

Learn how first-principles thinking can uncover overlooked customer needs, strengthen product-market fit, and reveal opportunities for significant growth. The session will use a real-world case study to explore how founders and product teams can identify new opportunities within products they already have.
Hosted by: PrincipiumX
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Long Lead Time: A Hardware Happy Hour

October 12 | 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. PT

Connect with founders, engineers, and operators building robotics, chips, rockets, and other frontier hardware. This casual, presentation-free gathering offers a chance to swap ideas, share experiences, and meet others working on the challenges of building physical technology.
Hosted by: Syntro
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Check the chronological schedule regularly as new Side Events are added weekly.

While you’re in San Francisco…

If you’re building your Disrupt Week calendar, don’t forget the main event.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 takes over Moscone West October 13-15, bringing thousands of founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders together under one roof. Come for the programming, stay for the hallway conversations, and leave with a calendar full of people you didn’t know you needed to meet.

Tickets are still available. Come be part of it.

Apple is set to launch Apple Pay in India later Tuesday with Axis Bank as its initial banking partner, TechCrunch has learned, bringing its payments service to the world’s most populous country after years on the sidelines of a market dominated by UPI.

The initial rollout will be limited, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple Pay will initially support eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not India’s homegrown RuPay network. Acceptance will also be restricted to merchants and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service.

Unlike India’s ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which lets consumers make instant bank-to-bank payments without relying on cards, Apple Pay is card-based and requires individual issuers and payment infrastructure providers to integrate with the service. This makes a broad rollout more complex. Apple’s commercial terms have also emerged as a sticking point with some of India’s largest banks, the people said.

Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points on transactions, according to the people, a significant bite out of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points of margin in the payments layer. The fee structure is broadly consistent with Apple Pay’s commercial model in other markets, the people said. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card are not expected to support Apple Pay at launch as negotiations over commercial terms continue, one of the people told TechCrunch.

Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Apple was preparing to launch Apple Pay in India in October, starting with Axis Bank credit cards.

Apple Pay is entering a payments market that looks markedly different from the U.S. and other card-heavy economies. India’s digital payments boom has been driven largely by UPI, the state-backed system that lets consumers move money directly between bank accounts.

UPI handles the bulk of digital payments in India, where scanning a QR code to pay directly from a bank account has become commonplace. Apple Pay, by contrast, will initially address a much smaller card payments market.

Nevertheless, Apple Pay could appeal to India’s growing base of iPhone users, who tend to be more affluent and are more likely to use premium credit cards. Those customers could make the service hard for banks to ignore, despite UPI’s dominance.

Even if Apple Pay remains a niche service, the economics could still make India meaningful for Apple. The transaction fee the iPhone maker would charge would give it another way to monetize its growing base of iPhone users in the country, the people said.

At launch, eligible Axis Bank customers will be allowed to add their credit cards to Apple’s Wallet app and use Apple Pay for online purchases as well as contactless payments at supported terminals, the people said.

An Apple Pay transaction could work at a terminal operated by an independent payments provider that has enabled the service but fail at another terminal whose acquiring bank has not, one of the people said. That could make acceptance uneven during the initial rollout, even for customers with supported cards.

The launch adds another piece to Apple’s growing business in India, where it has been expanding iPhone sales, local manufacturing and its retail footprint. Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, up from 23% a year earlier, per an earlier report by Counterpoint Research.

India already accounts for about a quarter of global iPhone production, and that share could rise to 30% to 35% over the next five years, Indian English daily Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.