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OpenAI becomes world's most valuable private company

ALSO : Perplexity makes Comet AI browser free

Author

Alexandre HOTTON
October 02, 2025

News of the day

1. OpenAI reaches a $500 billion valuation, becoming the world’s most valuable private company after an employee stock sale → Read more

2. Perplexity’s AI browser Comet is now free for everyone, with paying users gaining access to a new background assistant feature → Read more

3. Thinking Machines, the startup of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, launches Tinker, an API that simplifies fine-tuning of open-weight LLMs → Read more

4. Perplexity AI has acquired Visual Electric, a startup specializing in AI-powered design, to strengthen its Agent Experiences group → Read more

Our take

Hi Dotikers!

OpenAI just hit a historic milestone with a valuation of $500 billion following a $6.6 billion private stock sale. To put things in perspective: no private company had ever reached such a valuation before.

The interesting part? This sale is not a traditional funding round. The money goes directly into the pockets of current and former employees, not into OpenAI treasury. A smart retention strategy while Meta poached seven key engineers from OpenAI this summer with multimillion-dollar signing bonuses.

This valuation also represents a massive jump: last August, OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation. In two months, +$200 billion in valuation. Not bad.

And right now, they are shipping at breakneck speed. In just one week in late September, OpenAI launched three major features: Sora 2, their new ultra-realistic video generation model with improved audio and physics, ChatGPT Pulse, which proactively researches for you every night, and Instant Checkout, which lets you buy directly in ChatGPT from Etsy and soon Shopify. An innovation pace that is absolutely dizzying.

But behind the big numbers, major challenges: OpenAI has committed to spending $300 billion over five years at Oracle for its cloud infrastructure, while the company generated $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, burning through $2.5 billion in cash. Fortunately, Nvidia announced in September a $100 billion investment as part of a strategic partnership.

One last thing to watch: OpenAI is in active negotiations with Microsoft to become a standard for-profit company. Nothing is finalized yet, and if it falls through, this stock sale could create some legal complications.

A.

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