OpenAI Is Poised To Become The Most Valuable Startup Ever. Should It Be?

OpenAI is reportedly connected the verge of a astir $500 cardinal valuation, a fig that would marque it the astir invaluable private company successful the world—bigger than SpaceX, TikTok’s genitor institution Bytedance, and adjacent nationalist giants similar Palantir. It’s a staggering fig for a institution with an “astronomical pain rate.” How is this adjacent possible?

As Axios reports, determination are really 2 deals successful play: a SoftBank-led circular valuing the institution astatine $300 billion, which won’t adjacent until year’s end, and a secondary merchantability of worker shares astatine a acold steeper $500 cardinal valuation. Most of the cheaper shares person already been snapped up, leaving investors to combat implicit the pricier ones.

One OpenAI investor—who spoke connected the information of anonymity, citing an NDA—compared it to the dawn of the internet. “We're successful 1 of the biggest exertion shifts [in history],” the capitalist tells me. “The outcomes proceed to get bigger than radical think.”

The capitalist argues the mathematics for investing astatine the $500 cardinal valuation is straightforward: Hypothetically, if ChatGPT hits 2 cardinal users and monetizes astatine $5 per idiosyncratic per month—"half the complaint of things similar Google oregon Facebook”—that’s $120 cardinal successful yearly revenue.

“That unsocial would enactment a trillion and a fractional dollar company, which is simply a beauteous bully return, conscionable reasoning astir ChatGPT,” the capitalist says. “it doesn't see each the remainder of worldly they're moving on, each the endeavor stuff, each the agentic stuff, each of the enactment they’re doing connected hardware.”

Trillions of Dollars

The $5 fig is, admittedly, backmost of the envelope math. Today, ChatGPT has 700 cardinal play progressive users—and fewer than 10 percent pay (OpenAI declined to remark connected this figure). The investor’s projections are ambitious, and look to discount the menace of large players similar Google and Meta eating OpenAI’s lunch. “The fractional a trillion dollar question present is, to what grade volition OpenAI beryllium capable to clasp the customers that it has acquired, and simultaneously beryllium capable to bring its costs to a constituent wherever it can, successful fact, monetize astatine [hypothetically] $5 per idiosyncratic per month,” says Arun Sundararajan, a prof astatine New York University’s Stern School of Business.

The stake present is that OpenAI is the adjacent Facebook oregon Google. For investors buying successful astatine $500 billion, “they’re expecting an IPO supra a trillion successful 2 to 3 years, different the complaint of instrumentality does not warrant the investment,” says Glenn Okun, who’s besides a concern prof astatine NYU. That would mean leaping into the apical 10 astir invaluable nationalist companies successful the satellite astir overnight. The capitalist says they person a longer clip skyline than that, but “of people an IPO is the astir sensible way fixed the standard of the company.” Though the capitalist admits, yes, the institution would request to beryllium valued astatine much than $1 trillion to marque the concern worthwhile.

Stranger things person happened—particularly to OpenAI. In the archetypal 7 months of 2025, the institution doubled its projected yearly gross to $12 billion, which would estimation OpenAI is bringing successful astir $1 cardinal per month. Enterprise adoption has surged too, reaching 5 million paying concern users this month. Not to notation what potential advertizing revenue could bash to its bottommost line. To the investor, these are signs of a institution with the momentum to win: “People don't similar unprecedented things, due to the fact that astir radical similar to signifier match,” the capitalist says. “Everything this institution has done has been unprecedented from the gait of its gross maturation to the AI technology.”