New Funding Values OpenAI at Over $80 Billion

Thanks to a share sale to a venture capital firm, AI wunderkind OpenAI is now valued at over $80 billion, nearly triple its value just 10 months ago. (Bloomberg claims the valuation is $86 billion.)

News of the deal–a tender offer to buy shares led by Thrive Capital–was first reported by The New York Times, which cites multiple sources, and it follows a similar deal from early 2023 that valued OpenAI at $29 billion. A tender offer is a way for companies to buy shares in a privately held company, and this deal makes OpenAI the third-largest privately held company in the world, behind only TikTok maker ByteDance and SpaceX.

This deal also allows OpenAI employees to cash out their shares in the company, and those shares are worth a lot more than they were just a day earlier. OpenAI was negotiating the new valuation with Thrive back in November when OpenAI’s board unexpectedly fired CEO Sam Altman, setting off a week-long drama that led to Altman’s return, the removal of most board members, and small changes to its business structure. This valuation probably helps explain why most of the company’s employees signed a petition threatening to leave OpenAI if Altman were not reinstated.

Bloomberg adds that OpenAI isn’t done raising money: It is looking at a new round of funding that would raise its value to above $100 billion, and Mr. Altman is separately working to raise billions of dollars to help fund the manufacturing of the cutting-edge AI chipsets needed to fuel OpenAI’s work.

Microsoft owns 49 percent of OpenAI thanks to two rounds of investments totaling over $13 billion, and that relationship is now being scrutinized by antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe. OpenAI’s biggest rival, Anthropic, has likewise received $6 billion in investments from Amazon and Google.