Chatgpt’s continued popularity and intense user base have pushed Openai’s market value to new heights. The AI giant is negotiating to sell its shares at a valuation of about $500 billion, which could make it the world’s most valuable private company, surpassing Tiktok Parent Bytedance and Elon Musk’s Spacex.
The proposed secondary stock sales, first reported by Bloomberg, would not bring new capital to OpenAI, but would allow insiders to cash in, a common strategy used by fast-growing startups to retain talent and reward early employees. Thrive Capital, an existing investor in Openai, is reportedly negotiating to lead the deal. If completed, the valuation jump would be nearly 67% higher than Openai’s last valuation of $300 billion in March, after SoftBank raised $40 billion in financing.
Openai’s user base surges next to its valuation. The company revealed this week that Chatgpt has recently exceeded 700 million active users, up from $500 million in March. The company said users now exchange more than 3 billion messages on chatbots every day.
Openai mainly makes money through the ChatGpt subscription plan ($20 per month) and licenses its AI model to enterprise customers and developers. Although Openai has not confirmed its profitability yet, CNBC reports that the company is expected to reach $20 billion in annual revenue by the end of the year, which was expected two months ago.
On Tuesday, OpenAI released two “open weight” inference models that the company claims are better than sizes on low-cost inference tasks. The company is also preparing to launch the GPT-5, the most advanced language model to date.
Additionally, to expand government adoption, OpenAI recently entered into a nominal annual licensing agreement with U.S. federal agencies, enabling them to drive and deploy OpenAI’s tools in a variety of public sector applications.
In May, OpenAI announced the $6.5 billion all-share IO product acquisition, an AI hardware startup co-founded by former Apple design leader Jony Ive. The deal shows Openai’s ambitions go beyond software and into AI-powered consumer devices.
Openai is not the only AI company that directs high valuations. Anthropomorphism, founded in 2021 by a former Openai employee, is reportedly seeking a $170 billion valuation in its latest fundraising round. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Xai was launched in 2023 with a goal of up to $200 billion.
