OpenAI, the artificial intelligence firm behind ChatGPT, is reportedly in early discussions for a share sale that could value the company at $500 billion, potentially making it the most valuable privately held tech firm and surpassing Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the proposed transaction would allow current and former OpenAI employees to sell their shares, with existing investors — including Thrive Capital — considering buying in at the increased valuation. If the deal proceeds, OpenAI’s valuation would jump from its previous $300 billion estimate, reflecting growing investor confidence in the company’s leadership in the fast-evolving AI sector.
Neither OpenAI nor Thrive Capital have commented on the report.
The move comes as OpenAI faces intensifying competition for top AI talent. Meta, formerly Facebook, has launched a major recruitment drive for its “superintelligence” team, reportedly offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million. While some engineers have left OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman recently downplayed the departures, stating that none of the company’s top talent had joined Meta.
The share sale could serve as a strategic retention tool for OpenAI, offering employees liquidity without requiring a full public offering — a common approach among high-growth tech firms seeking to balance internal stability with external investment.
Meanwhile, OpenAI continues to push forward on multiple fronts. This week, Altman confirmed the launch of two new open-source AI models and teased the imminent release of GPT-5, the next iteration of its flagship language model. “We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world,” he said.
Despite this open-source push, OpenAI’s main revenue continues to come from its proprietary models, offered through ChatGPT subscriptions and enterprise integrations. The company operates under a unique structure, with a non-profit entity overseeing a capped-profit subsidiary — though internal talks around transitioning to a full for-profit model have reportedly stalled due to ongoing negotiations with major investor Microsoft.
In a separate development, OpenAI is expanding into consumer hardware. Earlier this year, it acquired tech startup io — founded by former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive — in a $6.4 billion deal. OpenAI aims to launch 100 million AI-powered personal devices, dubbed “AI companions”, by 2027. Altman described the prototype as “the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen.”
If the $500 billion valuation is achieved, OpenAI would outpace SpaceX — valued at roughly $350 billion — and leap ahead of other AI players like Anthropic, which is targeting a $170 billion valuation in its next funding round. With growing demand for compute power, chips, and data centre infrastructure, access to capital remains crucial in the AI arms race.
The potential share sale would mark another milestone in OpenAI’s rapid rise, underscoring its dominant position in shaping the future of artificial intelligence amid intensifying competition, regulatory scrutiny, and global interest in ethical AI deployment.
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