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

Openai would be On the verge of an evaluation of around $ 500 billion, a figure that would make it the most precious private business in the world – Bigger than SpaceX, the parent company of Tiktok, Bytedance, and even public giants as a palantant. It is an amazing number for a company with an “astronomical burning rate”. How is it even possible?

As Axios Reports, there are in fact two offers at stake: a soupling bank tour promoting the company at $ 300 billion, which will not close before the end of the year, and a secondary sale of employees’ shares to a much more abrupt $ 500 billion assessment. Most cheaper actions have already been taken, letting investors fight for the most expensive.

An Openai investor – who spoke under the cover of anonymity, citing an NDA – appeared it at the dawn of the Internet. “We are in one of the biggest technological changes [in history]”Said the investor.” The results continue to grow that people do not think so. »»

The investor maintains that mathematics to invest in the evaluation of $ 500 billion is simple: hypothetically, if Chatgpt reaches two billion users and monetizes at $ 5 per user per month – “half the rate of things like Google or Facebook” – which is $ 120 billion in annual income.

“This alone would support a business of Billion of Billions and a half, which is a fairly good yield, just thinking of Chatgpt,” said the investor. “This does not include all the other things on which they work, all corporate things, all the agenic things, all the work they do on the equipment.”

Billions of dollars

The $ 5 figure is certainly at the rear of the envelope mathematics. Today, Chatgpt has 700 million weekly active users – and less than 10% salary (Openai refused to comment on this figure). The investor’s projections are ambitious and seem to reduce the threat of the main players such as Google and Meta Eating Openai’s Lunch. “The question of a half-bill of dollars is now, to what extent will it open able to keep the customers he has acquired and to be able to simultaneously bring its costs to a point where it can, in fact, monetize to [hypothetically] $ 5 per user and per month, ”explains Arun Sunday, professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

The bet here is that Optai is the next Facebook or Google. For investors who buy $ 500 billion, “they expect an IPO greater than a Billion in two to three years, otherwise the rate of return does not justify the investment,” explains Glenn Okun, who is also a business teacher at Nyu. This would mean jumping in the ten most precious public enterprises in the world almost overnight. The investor says that they have a longer time horizon than that, but “of course, an IPO is the most judicious way given the business scale”. Although the investor admits, yes, the company should be assessed at more than 1 billion of dollars to argue.

Foreign things have happened, especially in Openai. During the first seven months of 2025, the company has doubled its annual income scheduled for $ 12 billion, which estimates that Optai would bring about $ 1 billion per month. The adoption of companies has also increased, reaching 5 million paid commercial users this month. Not to mention what potential advertising revenues could do its net profit. For the investor, these are signs of a business with the momentum to win: “People do not like unprecedented things, because most people love the match,” said the investor. “Everything that this company has done was unprecedented in the rate of its growth in revenue to AI technology.”