Sam Altman's OpenAI beats Elon Musk's SpaceX as ChatGPT-maker's valuation reaches $500 billion

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has reached a valuation of $500 billion, racing past Elon Musk's SpaceX, according to a report on Thursday.

As per Reuters quoting sources, the $500 billion valuation of OpenAI was reached after a deal in which current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion worth of share.

A Bloomberg report said that the stocks were sold to investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank Group Corp., Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and T. Rowe Price. This mega transaction pushed OpenAI's price tag well above $300 billion that it scaled earlier this year during a SoftBank-led financing round.

The rapid rise in OpenAI's valuation reflects the frenzy of investors concerning leaders of a technology who have the potential to turn around industries and even economies.

Sam Altman's OpenAI Jensen Huang's Nvidia are among some of the leading companies that are leading the global push to develop data centres and artificial intelligence services, an undertaking that’s expected to cost trillions of dollars.

Though it has yet to turn a profit, the US startup is helping fuel that infrastructure boom by inking mega-sized deals with the likes of Oracle Corp. and SK Hynix Inc.

OpenAI surpasses xAI

The deal vaults OpenAI past SpaceX’s $400 billion valuation. That milestone coincides with a pivotal time for Altman’s company, which is in negotiations with Microsoft Corp. to convert into a more traditional for-profit company. OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to advancing digital intelligence “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.” Planned changes will give the existing OpenAI nonprofit entity control over a new public benefit corporation.

Both Sam Altman and Elon Musk were OpenAI co-founders and shared the same opinions about the technology posing risks to humans, but have since fallen out.

OpenAI generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, the Information reported earlier this week.

The sale comes at a time when tech giants are competing aggressively for AI talent with lucrative compensation packages. Meta is notably investing billions in Scale AI and poached its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new super intelligence unit.

(With inputs from Bloomberg, Reuters)