business
In October 2025, a $6.6 billion sale of employee shares valued this AI company higher than almost any other private company in history.
The October 2025 sale let current and former OpenAI employees cash out existing shares to outside investors at a $500 billion valuation, reached almost entirely through private secondary trading rather than a public stock listing. That figure marked a sharp jump from the roughly $300 billion valuation set just months earlier when SoftBank first invested.
$150 billion undershoots the actual figure by a wide margin, and $1 trillion overshoots it — the real valuation landed at $500 billion, a number still striking given no fresh capital was raised in this particular transaction, just existing shares changing hands among investors like Thrive Capital and SoftBank.
Employee share sales like this have become a common way for high-flying private AI companies to let staff realize some wealth without waiting for an IPO, while also giving outside observers a fresh read on how markets are pricing the company.
business
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