OpenAI expands pre-IPO liquidity with $7 billion share sale

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OpenAI completes share sale

Highlights

OpenAI completed a secondary share sale worth roughly $7 billion.
The transaction valued the company at approximately $852 billion.
OpenAI raised $122 billion in committed capital earlier this year.
The company has confidentially filed paperwork for a potential IPO.

The tender offer had been under development since OpenAI completed its $122 billion financing round in March, according to CNBC. The secondary transaction does not raise new capital for OpenAI. Instead, it provides liquidity to eligible shareholders while reducing pressure to sell stock immediately after a possible IPO.

Liquidity before a public listing

Secondary transactions have become an increasingly important part of OpenAI's capital strategy. The company completed a $6.6 billion tender offer at a $500 billion valuation in October and another $1.5 billion transaction in 2024.

The latest sale comes after a much larger expansion of OpenAI financial resources. In March, the company closed a funding round with $122 billion in committed capital at the same $852 billion post-money valuation used for the new tender offer. The round included backing from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft, alongside major institutional investors.

OpenAI's growth also provides context for that valuation. The company says it is now generating about $2 billion in monthly revenue, compared with $1 billion per quarter at the end of 2024. Enterprise customers account for more than 40% of revenue and are expected to reach parity with consumer revenue by the end of 2026.

IPO expectations build

Attention is now shifting toward OpenAI's possible stock-market debut. The company confidentially filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June, though no timetable for an IPO has been announced.

The scale of the latest employee sale could help make that transition more orderly. Giving employees and former staff liquidity before an IPO can reduce pent-up selling demand while establishing another private-market reference point for the company valuation.

OpenAI's financial expansion has been accompanied by rapid user growth. The company reported more than 900 million weekly ChatGPT users and over 50 million consumer subscribers in February, while more than 9 million paying business users were using ChatGPT for work.

A major test for AI valuations

A public offering at anything close to OpenAI's current private valuation would become a major test of investor appetite for generative AI. The $852 billion benchmark is particularly significant because OpenAI is simultaneously spending heavily on computing infrastructure while trying to convert massive adoption into sustainable revenue.

The underlying business is already operating at an unusual scale. Monthly revenue has reached about $2 billion, while OpenAI has expanded its revolving credit facility to approximately $4.7 billion. Together with the $122 billion financing round and the latest $7 billion secondary sale, those figures show a company building the financial structure needed for its next stage of growth.

We also reported OpenAI completes one of banking’s largest AI deployments.

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