OpenAI to Raise $30B at $1.25T Valuation, Led by UAE

The significance here is less the headline number than the source of capital: Gulf sovereign wealth is becoming a primary backer of frontier AI at a scale that rivals public-market mega-caps, giving Abu Dhabi a structural stake in the compute layer that crypto and tokenized-asset infrastructure increasingly depends on. The timing is notable — a record-scale private raise landing alongside a Nasdaq selloff suggests private AI valuations are decoupling from public risk sentiment. Whether that gap holds, and whether the revised-down valuation signals softening appetite among other backers, is the open question.