OpenAI has now become the world’s most valuable privately held company hitting a valuation of $500 billion, surpassing SpaceX.
The major leap follows a $6.6 billion secondary sale of employee shares involving investors such as Thrive Capital, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Abu Dhabi’s MGX.
Nvidia further pledged nearly $100 billion, highlighting OpenAI’s role in the boom of the AI landscape.
The valuation tripled in 2025, exponentially rose by increased adoption of ChatGPT, with 700 million weekly users, and a rapid launch of products such as GPT-5, GPT-5 Codex, and Sora 2.
Revenue hit $4.3 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, with an estimate of $13 billion by the end of year, though the leading AI company remains unprofitable due to massive AI training and infrastructure costs.
OpeAI’s dominance is driving investors' interest, but competition is intensified. Anthropic, valued at $183 billion, Meta, and China’s DeepSeek are racing to move ahead with competitors.
Meanwhile, CEO Sam Altman faces lawsuits from tech billionaire Elon Musk and ongoing negotiations with Microsoft over restructuring.
Despite turbulence, OpenAI’s skyrocketing growth is redefining tech investment and consumer AI adoption.
With its valuation hitting $500 billion, it will expectedly reach the trillion-dollar milestone in the near future, if it can balance scale with profitability.
