According to a new Bloomberg report, Openai has sold $6.6 billion in stake held by current and former employees. The sale brings Openai to a total valuation of $500 billion. This is the best private company has ever achieved. Buyers included SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, MGX, and T. Rowe Price.
This sale was not a traditional funding round, as cash was sent to individuals holding Openai shares or options, rather than the company’s financial resources. Still, it is a powerful retention tool for the company and faces great pressure from Meta’s newly revitalized AI lab. This summer, Meta poached at least seven top engineers at Openai, attracting them with a signature bonus of millions of dollars.
Openai’s latest funding round came in August, when it completed its $40 billion funding at a $300 billion valuation. Softbank, Thrive, T. RowePrice and Dragoneer are also investors in that round, private equity companies such as Blackstone and TPG, as well as major venture capitalists such as Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
This sale is also a reminder of Openai’s ability to raise cash when needed. This is a particularly important resource given the company’s ambitious infrastructure plans. Openai has pledged to spend $300 billion on Oracle Cloud Services over the next five years. This amount is significantly greater than your current revenue or reserves. However, the strong momentum of the company’s fundraising campaign suggests that it is not as quirky as standard arithmetic shows. In September, Nvidia announced plans to invest $100 billion in Openai as part of its strategic infrastructure partnership.
The new sale will occur a few weeks after the non-binding agreement between Openai and Microsoft. Many thought Openai was paving the way for a transformation into a commercial entity. However, the Openai conversion has not yet been confirmed in the court, and if the conversion fails to go as planned, a new sale could cause serious complications.
Openai continues to develop and launch products at a fierce pace, releasing the latest Sora 2 video models and accompanying social media feeds earlier this week. The company reported revenue of $4.3 billion in the first half of 2025, burning $2.5 billion in cash.
