Key Takeaways OpenAI has finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion at a record $500 billion valuation. The $500 billion valuation makes OpenAI the world's most valuable privately held com...
OpenAI has completed a secondary share sale that values the artificial intelligence company at $500 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell approximately $6.6 billion worth of stock.
The transaction represents a dramatic increase from the company's $300 billion valuation just months earlier and solidifies OpenAI's position as the most valuable private company globally.
The share sale included investors such as Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi's MGX, and T. Rowe Price.
While OpenAI had initially authorized up to $10.3 billion in shares for sale, ultimately only about two-thirds of that amount changed hands.
The $500 billion valuation comes on the heels of OpenAI's historic $40 billion primary funding round completed in March 2025.
That round, led by SoftBank with a $30 billion investment, valued the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion and represented the largest private tech funding round on record.
The valuation nearly doubled from OpenAI's October 2024 funding round, which had valued the company at $157 billion.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman highlighted the company's explosive growth, noting that while the ChatGPT launch was one of the most viral moments he'd ever seen, with one million users added in five days, the company recently added one million users in the last hour.
The valuations reflect OpenAI's remarkable commercial momentum.
The company has surpassed 700 million ChatGPT weekly active users and achieved approximately $12-13 billion in annualized revenue, with projections to reach $20 billion by the end of the year.
This represents exponential growth from the $3.7 billion in revenue the company generated in 2024.
At the time of the March funding announcement, OpenAI reported that ChatGPT had 500 million weekly users, meaning the platform added 200 million weekly users in just a few months.
However, the funding comes with significant conditions. Half of the $40 billion funding is contingent on OpenAI completing its conversion from a nonprofit to a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation by December 31, 2025.
The company's current hybrid structure, which includes a capped-profit limited partnership created in 2019, has faced scrutiny and legal challenges.
The plan will need the blessing of Microsoft and the California attorney general, and has been challenged in court by Elon Musk, who was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015 when it was started as a nonprofit research lab.
The share sale marks OpenAI's second major tender offer in less than a year, following a $1.5 billion deal with SoftBank in November.
Such secondary sales have become increasingly common among high-valued startups like SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks, allowing employees to cash out while the company remains private.
The move is widely seen as a strategy to retain talent and reward long-term employees without pursuing an IPO, particularly as Meta has reportedly offered nine-figure compensation packages to recruit top AI researchers.
The company's valuation trajectory reflects broader investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence.
The generative artificial intelligence market is poised to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade, with OpenAI positioned as the market leader despite increasing competition from companies like Google, Meta, Anthropic, and xAI.
Despite its massive valuation and revenue growth, OpenAI continues to operate at a loss.
The company had revenues of $3.7 billion in 2024 with losses exceeding $5 billion, and is expected to see losses double or triple to $10-15 billion in 2025.
Microsoft is reportedly exploring OpenClaw-style AI features for Copilot that could make the assistant more proactive inside Microsoft 365.
Meta launches Muse Spark, a closed proprietary AI model with tiered reasoning and 3B+ user reach across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Quest VR.
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