OpenAI is in talks to raise a new round of funding at an eye-popping $100 billion-plus valuation, sources told The Wall Street Journal this week.
It turns out investors have already proven they are willing to value the company that high to get on OpenAI’s coveted cap table. Multiple companies that track or facilitate secondaries deals — where investors buy shares from existing investors, not directly from the company — have seen investors pay prices that indicate an over $100 billion valuation.
The primary deal that OpenAI is negotiating would reportedly be led by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, which would put in $1 billion, according to Journal reporting, with Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple, being rumored as investors as well. This would be quite the step up for the AI leader. The company was most recently valued at $86 billion in a secondary sale involving existing stakes in September, Bloomberg reported.
Still, securities trader Rainmaker Securities has seen investors bidding on OpenAI stock at prices that value the company up to $143 billion. Caplight, a secondary data tracking platform, estimates that the company is currently worth more than $111 billion based on both secondaries activity and past traditional financing rounds.
“There are a lot of investors that really want to be part of this story and want to be an investor in this company,” Glen Anderson, co-founder and managing partner at Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “So a $100 billion valuation, is it rich? Maybe. But, I mean, if OpenAI can live up to [its] potential, it may be a steal.”
Greg Martin, a co-founder and managing director at Rainmaker Securities, added that while the company valuation has risen quickly, so has its revenue. While OpenAI still reportedly burns a ton of cash, he said it’s worth noting that the company went from having $0 in revenue just a few years ago to having billions today. The company is tracking to hit $2 billion in ARR by the end of the year, according to The Information.
“Obviously it is hard to put a proper valuation on OpenAI, but we are seeing a lot of demand,” Martin said. “There is a fear of missing out on the premium the company is getting. There is certainly a cogent argument that the company could be worth a trillion dollars some day.”
While OpenAI’s next official valuation is still yet to be determined, one thing is already for sure — this funding round will spark more secondaries activity around OpenAI and other AI competitors, Martin said. He predicts it will also give a valuation boost to companies including Anthropic, Cohere, Hugging Face and more.
“It generates buzz. It generates excitement. It resets market expectations,” Martin said.
Source @TechCrunch
