OpenAI has begun talks to sell shares at a $500 billion valuation

OpenAI is in talks with investors to sell shares to employees in a deal that could see developer ChatGPT surpass Ilon Musk's SpaceX in value and become the most valuable non-public technology company. The deal would help OpenAI convince its top talent to stay with the company despite nine-figure fees at Meta.

OpenAI has yet to complete a fundraising round that values it at $300 billion, but it is already preparing for a new investment round that could value it at $500 billion, Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported, citing sources familiar with the talks. If the deal goes through, OpenAI would be worth more than SpaceX, whose value in July reached $400 billion.

According to words of Bloomberg's interlocutors, the Thrive Capital fund and other OpenAI shareholders have approached the company with an offer to buy some shares from current and former employees. The final valuation and the size of the stake have not yet been determined - everything will depend on investor interest. However, one of the FT's sources confirms that the size of the deal is likely to be well over $1.5 billion - the amount for which OpenAI employees realized their securities at the end of 2024.

Large U.S. startups often organize stock sales for their employees to reward and retain staff. According to words from one of Bloomberg's sources, OpenAI is looking to capitalize on high investor interest to "provide employees with liquidity that reflects the company's growth." OpenAI recently lost several top researchers to Meta Platforms. The latter has been actively recruiting top talent from Apple and other competitors to join its artificial "superintelligence" development team, offering nine-figure salaries.

OpenAI shares are not traded on an exchange. Trading platform Robinhood recently launched for investors in Europe to trade cryptocurrency derivatives - tokens - on shares of U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and companies, including non-public OpenAI and SpaceX. OpenAI explained that these tokens do not represent a stake in the company. They are essentially "derivatives that provide indirect access to the underlying asset," noted Galaxy Research.

Since ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, OpenAI's annual recurring revenue (ARR) - a metric that reflects estimated subscription revenue and is often used by startups - has grown to $12 billion. By the end of 2025, OpenAI predicts ARR will reach and exceed $20 billion, says an FT source.

Its closest competitor, Anthropic, has quadrupled its ARR to $4 billion in 2025 and is in talks to raise at least $5 billion at a valuation of $170 billion. Both companies remain unprofitable due to the enormous costs of training and operating the most advanced AI models. 

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor