OpenAI Valuation Hits $500B, Tops SpaceX, ByteDance

OpenAI's valuation jumped to about $500 billion after current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion of shares in a secondary sale to investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T. Rowe Price. The deal lifts the ChatGPT maker past SpaceX and ByteDance and follows a prior $300 billion valuation from a SoftBank-led financing; the company has cleared over $10 billion in secondary-market stock sales to date. The increase reflects intense investor demand as OpenAI scales revenue—reported at about $4.3 billion in the first half of 2025, roughly 16% more than full-year 2024—and signs large partnerships with firms such as Oracle and SK Hynix. The share sale provided employee liquidity to help retain talent amid aggressive hiring by rivals like Meta. Separately, OpenAI is weighing changes to its corporate structure toward a more conventional for‑profit/public‑benefit model, a shift that has prompted criticism and legal challenges from Elon Musk.