OpenAI has completed a secondary share sale worth $6.6 billion. This brings the company’s valuation to $500 billion, an increase of $200 billion compared to March this year. According to various media outlets, this is the highest valuation ever for a private company.
This was reported by SiliconAngle. The sale was open to current and former employees who had owned shares for at least two years. Initially, the plan was to make more than $10 billion worth of shares available, but in the end, less than two-thirds of that amount was sold. Among the buyers were T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Thrive Capital, which also invested heavily last year. SoftBank and Abu Dhabi-based MGX also participated. They are also involved in OpenAI’s Stargate initiative, a $500 billion project to build a network of data centers in the United States with a combined capacity of more than 10 gigawatts.
However, OpenAI is not only expanding its infrastructure in the US. Plans were previously announced for data centers in Norway, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. South Korea was recently added to the list. In early October, OpenAI signed new partnerships with Samsung and SK.
Data centers in South Korea
During a meeting in Seoul with President Lee Jae-myung, agreements were made to accelerate the production of advanced memory chips and to investigate locations for new data centers. Specific attention will be paid to regions outside Seoul in order to spread economic growth more evenly. SK Telecom and several Samsung subsidiaries are also involved. Samsung and SK also want to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise within their own organizations.
The Korean chipmakers plan to jointly produce up to 900,000 wafers per month, accounting for approximately 40 percent of global supply. At the same time, OpenAI expects to spend approximately $350 billion on server rentals by 2030. This makes it difficult to become profitable quickly, but the high valuation shows that investors are confident that the company can control its costs.
The revenue growth also gives cause for confidence. In the first half of this year, OpenAI reportedly generated $4.3 billion in revenue, more than in all of 2024. Although the sale of shares does not generate new capital, the higher valuation may facilitate future acquisitions. In recent months, OpenAI has already acquired Statsig and io Products in transactions paid entirely with shares.