A recent sale of $6.6 billion in shares held by current and former OpenAI employees has propelled the company's valuation to $500 billion, marking the highest valuation ever recorded for a privately held entity, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
The transaction saw participation from several prominent investors, including SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, MGX, and T. Rowe Price, the report indicated. Unlike a traditional funding round, the proceeds from this sale were directed to the individual share and option holders rather than into OpenAI's corporate reserves.
Sources familiar with the matter suggest that the share sale functions as a significant retention mechanism for OpenAI. This comes amid increased competition for AI talent, notably from Meta's revitalized artificial intelligence division, which reportedly recruited at least seven top engineers from OpenAI earlier this summer, offering multi-million dollar signing bonuses.
This latest valuation follows OpenAI's most recent funding round in August, which raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation. That round also included investments from SoftBank, Thrive, T. Rowe Price, and Dragoneer, alongside private equity firms such as Blackstone and TPG, and venture capitalists like Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The company has outlined ambitious infrastructure plans, committing to spend $300 billion on Oracle Cloud Services over the next five years. While this sum significantly exceeds OpenAI's current revenue and cash reserves, the continuous momentum of its fundraising efforts suggests a strong market confidence. In September, Nvidia announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI that includes a $100 billion investment.
The share sale also takes place weeks after a non-binding agreement was reached between OpenAI and Microsoft. Many observers interpreted this agreement as a precursor to OpenAI's potential conversion into a for-profit entity. However, the conversion has not yet received court confirmation, and the recent share transactions could introduce complexities if the restructuring does not proceed as anticipated.
OpenAI continues to demonstrate rapid product development, having recently launched its Sora 2 video model and an accompanying social media feed. In the first half of 2025, the company reported $4.3 billion in revenue while incurring $2.5 billion in cash burn.
