San Francisco, 3 October 2025 — OpenAI has reached a landmark $500 billion valuation following a $6.6 billion secondary share sale, making it the world’s most valuable privately held company and surpassing SpaceX. The deal, which allowed current and former employees to cash out equity, drew investment from major firms including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and T. Rowe Price.
The valuation surge reflects investor confidence in OpenAI’s rapid revenue growth — reportedly $4.3 billion in the first half of 2025, exceeding its entire 2024 earnings. The company’s expanding portfolio of enterprise AI tools and consumer applications continues to drive demand.
In parallel, OpenAI has secured a strategic chip supply agreement with South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, ensuring access to high-bandwidth memory chips for its global data centre buildout. The partnership is part of the Stargate initiative, a $500 billion U.S.-led AI infrastructure project aimed at maintaining technological leadership.
The chip deal includes plans to construct two new data centres in Korea, with OpenAI expected to purchase up to 900,000 wafers per month, representing nearly 40% of global supply. Analysts say this move creates a significant competitive moat, securing both compute capacity and geopolitical alignment.
While OpenAI’s dominance appears formidable, industry observers caution that sustainability and profitability remain open questions. The company’s infrastructure ambitions — including global data centres and acquisitions — require capital outlays in the hundreds of billions. Rival firms like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta’s new superintelligence unit are also scaling aggressively.
Still, OpenAI’s combination of capital, talent, and hardware access positions it at the forefront of the AI race, with its Stargate project and chip partnerships reinforcing its long-term strategic edge.
