Investors already value OpenAI at over $100 billion on the secondary market

OpenAI is in talks to lift a brand new round of funding at a powerful valuation of over $100 billion, sources told The Wall Street Journal this week.

It seems that investors have already proven they’re willing to value an organization high enough to land on OpenAI’s coveted cap table. Many firms that track or facilitate secondary transactions—where investors buy shares from existing investors quite than directly from the company—have seen investors pay prices that suggest valuations of greater than $100 billion.

The foremost deal OpenAI is reportedly negotiating can be Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, which is able to invest $1 billion, the Journal reported, with Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple also expected to be investors. It could be an enormous step forward for the AI ​​leader. The company was last valued at $86 billion in a secondary sale of existing shares in September, Bloomberg reported.

Still, Rainmaker Securities has seen investors bid up OpenAI shares at prices that value the company at $143 billion. Caplight, a secondary data tracking platform, estimates the company is now price greater than $111 billion based on each secondary market activity and former traditional funding rounds.

“There are a lot of investors who really want to be part of this story and want to be investors in this company,” Glen Anderson, co-founder and managing partner at Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “So is a $100 billion valuation high? Maybe. But I mean, if OpenAI lives up to its potential, it could be an opportunity.”

Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director of Rainmaker Securities, added that while the company’s valuation has quickly risen, so has its revenue. While OpenAI apparently it still smokes tons of money, said it’s price noting that the company went from $0 in revenue just a number of years ago to billions today. The company is tracking to hit $2 billion in ARR by the end of the yr, in accordance with Information.

“OpenAI is obviously hard to value properly, but we see a lot of demand,” Martin said. “There’s a concern that we’re going to lose the premium that the company gets. There’s certainly a compelling case that the company could be worth a trillion dollars someday.”

While OpenAI’s next official valuation has yet to be determined, one thing is definite — this round of funding will spark more activity in the secondary sector around OpenAI and other AI competitors, Martin said. He predicts it should also boost the valuations of firms like Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face and others.

“It generates buzz. It generates excitement. It resets market expectations,” Martin said.