According to CNBC, OpenAI is preparing for a double stock sale of about $6 billion, which will bring the company ‘ s valuation to approximately $500 billion (approximately 3.6 trillion yuan yuan), an increase of approximately 67 per cent over its previous valuation of $300 billion (the $40 billion financing round at the beginning of 2025).
According to the source, these shares will be sold by current and former OpenAI employees to investors, including the Soft Silver Group, the Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital, all of which are current OpenAI investors. Negotiations are still at an early stage and the details may change.
Employees are required to decide before 24 December 2025 whether to participate and how much to sell, and current and former employees working in the company for at least two years are eligible to participate. Current employees have priority over former employees, each of whom may sell up to $10 million worth of stocks; if the transaction is oversubscribed, the former employee may sell at least $2 million.
Since the launch of the Generating AI Chatter ChatGPT at the end of 2022, OpenAI ‘ s valuation has grown exponentially, from $15 billion (2023) to $500 billion in two years, an increase of over 33 times. ChatGPT has 700 million active users per week, and annualized income has increased from $3.7 billion in 2024 to $12 billion, which is expected to reach $20 billion at year-end.
In March, it announced the completion of a $40 billion round of financing, valued at $300 billion, the highest amount so far raised by private science and technology companies. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced that it had received an additional $8.3 billion in new funding as part of the financing round.
Last week, OpenAI released its latest and most advanced AI model GPT-5. OpenAI indicated that the model was smarter, faster and more practical, especially in the areas of writing, programming and health care. However, the roll-out process was not smooth, as some users complained that they could no longer use less advanced models (e.g. GPT-4o).
“We do underestimate the importance that users attach to some of the GPT-4o functions that they like, even though GPT-5 is better in most respects,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, wrote in a post on Twitter.
