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OpenAI could soon be worth half a trillion dollars. The company behind ChatGPT is in early
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talks to let current and former employees cash out some of their shares at a valuation of $500
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billion. That's according to CNBC and Reuters, which say the stock sale would happen before a
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potential IPO and involve billions of dollars in equity, possibly led by Thrive Capital
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one of OpenAI's biggest investors. OpenAI has not commented publicly, but the timing tracks
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with the company's recent surge in growth. In just the first half of 2025, revenue doubled to
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an annualized $12 billion, and its on pace to hit $20 billion by the end of the year
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ChatGPT now has about 700 million weekly users, up from 400 million in February. The company also
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just released its first open source models since 2019 and is gearing up for the launch of GPT-5
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the next version of its core AI model. If the stock sale goes through, it would let long-time
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employees cash out some of their shares and help gauge interest from investors. Other private tech
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firms like Databricks and ByteDance have done the same ahead of going public. While OpenAI is
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working to restructure away from its capped profit model. Executives say they're not rushing to IPO
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The company says it will wait until both internal conditions and the market are right
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