Catenaa, Thursday, October 02, 2025 – OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $ 50 billion valuation, becoming the world’s largest startup.
Current and former OpenAI employees sold about $6.6 billion of stock to investors, including Thrive Capital, SoftBank Group, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and T. Rowe Price, Bloomberg reported.
That boosted the US company’s price tag well past its previous $300 billion level during a SoftBank-led financing round earlier this year.
Sam Altman’s OpenAI is one of several companies, including Nvidia, now leading a global push to build data centers and develop artificial intelligence services, an undertaking that’s expected to cost trillions of dollars.
Though it has yet to turn a profit, the US startup is helping fuel that infrastructure boom by inking mega-sized deals with the likes of Oracle and SK Hynix.
The deal vaults OpenAI past SpaceX’s $400 billion valuation. That milestone coincides with a pivotal time for Altman’s company, which is in negotiations with Microsoft to convert into a more traditional for-profit company.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to advancing digital intelligence “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.” Planned changes will give the existing OpenAI nonprofit entity control over a new public benefit corporation.
A secondary sale could help OpenAI incentivize staff to stay at the company and turn down those lavish compensation offers.
Major US startups often negotiate share sales for their employees as a way to reward and retain staff, and also attract external investors. OpenAI is seeking to capitalize on investor demand to offer employees liquidity that reflects the company’s growth.
The total amount of eligible units sold in the secondary fell short of the $10 billion-plus worth of stock that the company allowed for sale, the report said.
