OpenAi is in initial negotiations on a possible sale of stocks to current and old employees, with an assessment of about US $ 500 billion (the equivalent of R $ 2.7 trillion), said informed people about investment discussions, marking a huge value gain for the artificial intelligence leader.
The company is aiming for a secondary sale of shares at the billions of dollars, the sources said, who asked for anonymity for not being allowed to discuss the issue publicly. Existing investors, including Thrive Capital, sought OpenAi to buy some of employees’ shares, said people.
If the agreement advances, it would raise the market value “on the paper” of OpenAi in about two thirds. Its previous valuation was $ 300 billion in a $ 40 billion round of softbank led-making it one of the world’s largest private companies. Representatives of OpenAi and Thrive refused to comment.
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The most recent movement follows last week’s news that the startup had secured $ 8.3 billion from an investor union for a second installment of that $ 40 billion financing, which was subscribed about five times, according to one of the people informed about the discussions. OpenAi was able to capture this financing ahead of schedule, the source said.
Large US startups often negotiate stock sales to their employees as a way of rewarding and retaining talents and attracting external investors. The company, led by Sam Altman, seeks to take advantage of investors’ demand to provide liquidity to employees reflecting the company’s growth, according to one of the people familiar with negotiations.
In recent months, OpenAi has lost several members of its research team to the goal, which aggressively recruited Apple’s high -level talents and other competitors to its “superintelligent” AI team, offering salary packages at the nine -digit house. A secondary sale for OpenAI could serve as an incentive for employees to stay at the company, even in the face of generous compensation offers.
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OpenAi also faces increasing competitive pressure from AI rival startups. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAi employees, is close to an agreement to raise up to $ 5 billion in a new round of financing that would evaluate it at $ 170 billion, said the Bloomberg News. Elon Musk would also be looking for an assessment of up to $ 200 billion for his startup, Xai.
OpenAi, whose chatgPT has inaugurated a new era in AI development, has supervised a series of important recent technological releases.
These include two free and available artificial intelligence models that can imitate the human reasoning process, months after Deepseek, from China, has gained global attention with its own open AI software. The company is now preparing the launch of its latest GPT-5 model, with the aim of consolidating OpenAI’s leadership in an increasingly competitive field. OpenAi is also providing access to its ChatgPT product for US federal agencies at a symbolic cost of $ 1 per year, as part of an effort to expand the adoption of AI chatbot.
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The startup has announced that it expects chatgpt to reach 700 million active weekly users this week, an increase over the 500 million in late March. The application also recently exceeded 3 billion messages sent per day. In May, he revealed plans to acquire the AI -co -founded AI devices startup by Apple Jony Ive veteran, in an agreement almost all of $ 6.5 billion, joining forces with the legendary designer to advance the hardware market.
The company also faces several challenges. OpenAi is currently in separate discussions about its future as a for -profit company, a negotiation that has been going on for months.
Microsoft, which supported OpenAi with about $ 13.75 billion and has the right to wear its intellectual property, is the largest obstacle among the investors of the ChatgPT creator, said the Bloomberg previously. The question is the size of Microsoft’s participation in a reconfigured company.
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Negotiations have expanded to renegotiation of the relationship between the parties, with the software manufacturer seeking to avoid losing access to Startup technology before the end of the current agreement, which expires in 2030.
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