It's crazy: OpenAI's latest valuation is $500 billion.

On August 6th, Beijing time, according to media reports, OpenAI is in negotiations regarding the secondary sale of employee stocks, and the company's valuation is expected to reach $500 billion. Once completed, OpenAI will continue to refresh the title of the world's most highly valued unlisted company.

Currently, the most highly valued unlisted company in China is ByteDance. Recently, some investors are willing to buy old shares at a valuation of $300 billion. (ByteDance has a relatively large revenue and profit scale, and its growth rate is quite high.)

01

How exaggerated is OpenAI's valuation of up to $500 billion? We can compare it with the market values of listed companies in the US stock market.

Calculated based on the closing market values on August 6th, Beijing time. There are 16 individual stocks in the US stock market with a market value exceeding $500 billion, including NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Google - C (Google - A), Amazon, Meta, Broadcom, TSMC, Berkshire - B (Berkshire - A) at the $1 trillion mark, Tesla, JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Eli Lilly, Oracle, Visa, Mastercard, etc., as well as four ETFs such as VOO, SPY, IVV, VTI.

In total, only 20 trading entities have a market value exceeding $500 billion, while OpenAI's valuation in the primary market is about to reach $500 billion.

Actually, OpenAI's valuation in the primary market has been rising very rapidly.

In April 2025, OpenAI completed a new round of financing of $40 billion, and its post - investment valuation was $300 billion.

Besides OpenAI, there may be two other large - model companies in the US with a valuation exceeding $100 billion, namely Anthropic and xAI.

On August 2nd, some media reported that Anthropic is in talks for a new round of financing of $3 - 5 billion. The lead investor is expected to be the investment bank Iconiq Capital, and its latest valuation has reached $170 billion.

In early March 2025, Anthropic completed its most recent round of financing, raising $3.5 billion with a valuation of $61.5 billion.

On July 2nd, some media reported that after xAI completed a total financing of $10 billion, its valuation rose from $51 billion at the end of 2024 to $80 billion.

Subsequently, at the end of July, some media reported that xAI is conducting a new round of financing at a valuation of $200 billion.

02

This is the crazy US AI financing market. It's really too exaggerated.

The valuation growth rate in the primary market is even faster than that in the secondary market!

Regarding OpenAI's valuation of up to $500 billion, according to Bloomberg, existing investors including Thrive Capital are in contact with OpenAI to discuss purchasing some employee shares.

When OpenAI completed a $40 - billion financing at a valuation of $300 billion, SoftBank contributed $30 billion. It is speculated that Trump gave an investment instruction to Masayoshi Son. This means that OpenAI's valuation of $300 billion is quite solid. After all, the financing amount was as high as $40 billion, and the lead investor, SoftBank, contributed $30 billion.

Since this round of valuation of up to $500 billion may mainly involve the purchase of some employee shares, this may be a way for OpenAI to deal with the multi - billion - dollar salary packages waved by Meta's Zuckerberg. In the past three months, many key AI researchers at OpenAI have been poached by Meta, including several Chinese researchers.

OpenAI may have raised its valuation to $500 billion because the company doesn't have enough funds (more funds are needed to purchase NVIDIA chips to build super - computing centers) to offer salaries comparable to Meta's to retain talent. It can only retain talent in this way.

03

This is the US capital market's penchant for creating "god - like" companies. Previously, it was in the secondary market. From the launch of the first company with a market value of $1 trillion to NVIDIA's recent breakthrough of $4 trillion in market value, reaching $4.35 trillion, this is extremely exaggerated. If it were considered an economy, it would rank among the top five in the world.

Now it's the primary market's turn to create such "god - like" companies, and OpenAI has become the latest one. Its valuation is about to reach $500 billion. It's worth mentioning that Altman previously claimed to invest $7 trillion to build a global chip empire.

However, in the previous wave of self - driving investment targets in the US, Cruise, which was once valued at $30 billion, has disappeared and been absorbed back into General Motors. It's worth mentioning that both Masayoshi Son and the author invested billions of dollars in Cruise.

Another target, Waymo, is valued at $45 billion. Even so, Josh Beck, an analyst at Raymond James, believes that Waymo's valuation should be $150 billion, and TD Cowen predicts that Waymo's valuation will reach $75 billion in 2026.

If OpenAI's valuation in the primary market has reached $500 billion, how will it go public in the secondary market? Will its market value exceed $1 trillion after going public?

This article is from the WeChat official account "Che Zhi" (ID: invehc), author: Michael Yuan, published by 36Kr with authorization.