By Bloomberg

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OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a US$500 billion valuation, propelling the ChatGPT creator past Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the world’s largest start-up.
Current and former OpenAI employees sold about US$6.6 billion of stock to investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank Group Corp, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T Rowe Price, a person familiar with the transaction said.
That boosted San Francisco-based OpenAI’s price tag well past its previous US$300 billion level during a SoftBank-led financing round earlier this year.
The rapid rise underscores the investment frenzy surrounding the leaders of a technology with the potential to transform industries and economies.
Sam Altman’s OpenAI is one of several companies, including Nvidia, now leading a global push to build data centres and develop artificial intelligence services, an undertaking that is expected to cost trillions of dollars.
Though it has yet to turn a profit, the US start-up is helping fuel that infrastructure boom by inking mega-sized deals with the likes of Oracle Corp and SK Hynix.
Representatives for Thrive Capital, Dragoneer, MGX and T Rowe Price did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OpenAI and SoftBank representatives declined to comment.
The deal vaults OpenAI past SpaceX’s US$400 billion valuation. That milestone coincides with a pivotal time for Altman’s company, which is in negotiations with Microsoft Corp to convert into a more traditional for-profit company.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit enterprise dedicated to advancing digital intelligence “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.” Planned changes would give the existing OpenAI non-profit entity control over a new public benefit corporation.
Both Altman and Musk, who were OpenAI co-founders, have spoken about the potential existential risk to humans posed by AI. Yet they have since fallen out.
Musk has sued to try and stop the overhaul, accusing OpenAI of forsaking promises to him when he helped to create the non-profit company. He claims the start-up abandoned its founding purpose when it accepted billions of dollars in backing from Microsoft starting in 2019, the year after he left OpenAI’s board.
When it comes to the business itself, OpenAI faces an increasingly competitive market for AI talent as Big Tech firms jockey for the resources they need. Meta Platforms, for one, has recruited researchers aggressively from OpenAI and other top labs for its new “superintelligence” team, offering pay packages in the nine-figure range.
A secondary sale could help OpenAI incentivise staff to stay at the company and turn down those lavish compensation offers.
Major US start-ups often negotiate share sales for their employees as a way to reward and retain staff, and also attract external investors. OpenAI is looking to leverage investor demand to provide employees with liquidity that reflects the company’s growth.
The total amount of eligible units sold in the secondary market fell short of the US$10 billion-plus worth of stock that OpenAI allowed for sale, the person familiar said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the information is private. That could mean current and former employees are showing confidence in the long-term viability of the business, the person added.
In the long run, OpenAI faces mounting competitive pressure from rivals such as Google and Anthropic, a start-up that is also raising capital at a rapid clip. In response, OpenAI has embarked on a spate of recent technology product launches.
Those include a pair of open and freely available AI models that can mimic the human process of reasoning, months after China’s DeepSeek gained global attention with its own open software. OpenAI released its most powerful GPT-5 model in August, aimed at shoring up its lead in an increasingly crowded sphere.