OpenAI eyes $86 billion valuation amid insider share sale

Artificial intelligence (AI)-focused startup OpenAI’s valuation could soon soar to as much as $86 billion as the company is reportedly planning to conduct a tender offer allowing its current employees to sell their shares, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 19.

A tender offer allows employees and existing company shareholders to convert their holdings into cash. An Elon Musk-led company, SpaceX, notably executed a similar offer in June, taking its valuation to around $150 billion.

For OpenAI, this move marks another milestone in its remarkable ascent. The company’s valuation has more than doubled in just two years, reaching $30 billion from the $14 billion valuation in 2021. If it successfully raises the new funding, its valuation would surpass storied financial companies like Stripe while remaining behind Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent ByteDance.

OpenAI has yet to respond to CryptoSlate’s request for comment as of press time.

CryptoSlate reported that OpenAI has secured the most funding of any AI company this year. The AI company had received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft earlier this year before getting an additional $300 million in funding from venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.

The substantial funding injection was primarily driven by the remarkable performance of OpenAI’s AI-powered ChatGPT, which emerged as a standout innovation in the previous year. ChatGPT generates responses based on written prompts, demonstrating sophistication and creativity far surpassing conventional chatbots.

This success paved the way for competing products such as Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Bard. Nevertheless, OpenAI’s ChatGPT maintains its dominant position as the industry leader as it is actively developing new products and introducing features to remain at the top.

Besides that, the company is also on track to generate $1 billion in annual revenue as more businesses adopt its technology.

Meanwhile, despite its recorded success, OpenAI’s leadership has reportedly maintained that the company has no plans to go public soon.

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