OpenAI hits a $500B valuation after $6.6B employee tender

OpenAI has reportedly completed a secondary sale that lets current and former employees cash out ~$6.6B, valuing the company at roughly $500 billion—vaulting it past SpaceX as the world’s most valuable startup.

What’s new

Multiple outlets report OpenAI closed an employee share sale at a ~$500B valuation, with buyers including major asset managers and strategic investors. The deal follows months of chatter about a tender aimed at giving early employees and ex-staff liquidity while avoiding primary dilution.

Why it matters

  • Talent magnet: A deep secondary market makes it easier for OpenAI to retain/attract senior researchers and infra talent versus Big Tech packages.
  • Capex signal: A $500B price tag implies sustained spending on training clusters, networking, and HBM supply—context for our recent note on Samsung & SK Hynix signing LOIs for OpenAI’s ‘Stargate’.
  • Ecosystem pull: Expect continued scramble for power, land, and cooling.

The bigger picture

If the valuation sticks, OpenAI’s cost of talent and capital stays favorable just as rivals push multi-billion-dollar training roadmaps. Watch whether enterprise revenue and inference margins keep pace with cluster opex, and how model cadence evolves under safety and IP pressures.

What to watch next

  • More secondary windows in 2026 tied to vesting cliffs.
  • Cloud capacity announcements (and who lands them).
  • Enterprise SKU/pricing moves as incumbents push bundled AI seats.

Sources

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