(CTN News) – The announcement on Friday that OpenAI is getting ready to sell around $6 billion worth of stock as part of a secondary offer that would value the company at approximately $500 billion.

This information was disclosed by OpenAI officials.

A secondary offering would include this particular offer as one of its components. The concerned organization has verified all the provided information.

A source who is familiar with the negotiations and who asked not to be named due to the delicate nature of the conversations stated that the shares will be sold by current and former employees to investors such as SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Thrive Capital.

The source requested anonymity due to the delicate nature of the conversations. We received this information from an individual unfamiliar with the negotiations. Furthermore, this individual claimed that the shares will be sold by both the current employees of the company as well as the employees who had previously worked for the organization.

The person who participated in the conversations and had previous experience with them was the one who shared this information with us. As we are still in the preliminary stages of the conversations, it is possible that the particulars will be susceptible to change. This is because the talks are just beginning.

Bloomberg was the first news organization to report on the negotiations before any other outlet. Bloomberg reported on the negotiations before any other news organization did. On the other hand, a recent report by CNBC suggests that it is possible that Thrive Capital will be the company that is responsible for leading the round of funding.

All three of these companies have already provided financial backing to OpenAI.

CNBC’s request for comment did not receive an immediate response from SoftBank, Dragoneer, or Thrive Capital. In this case, both companies are involved in the provision of financial services.

Considering the fact that OpenAI, a business that specializes in artificial intelligence, launched its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT in the latter part of 2022, the valuation of the company has climbed at a rate that is tenfold larger than it was previously thought to be.

OpenAI said it has closed a $40 billion fundraising round.

This brought the overall valuation of the company to $300 billion. This is the most sum that a private technology business has ever raised in its entire lifetime, and it is by a significant margin the highest aggregate total there has ever been.

The business OpenAI said in a statement at the beginning of this month that it had obtained an additional fundraising round of $8.3 billion, which was tied to the investment round that was previously mentioned. The general public has learned about it.

OpenAI made the news that it had constructed GPT-5 over the course of the preceding week. This model is the most recent and cutting-edge large-scale artificial intelligence model that the business has developed, and it is now accessible for use.

OpenAI says it’s “a lot more useful,” smarter, and faster than before. The aforementioned statement holds particularly true in domains such as writing, coding, and health care. Furthermore, the model is substantially faster than its predecessor.

On the other side, the implementation has been fraught with issues, since several users have expressed their discontent with the fact that they are no longer able to access OpenAI’s older models. This situation has led to numerous challenges in the implementation process.

OpenAI’s Chief Executive Officer, Sam Altman, made the following statement in a post on X. He stated, “We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways.”

It does not change the fact that this is also the case although GPT-5 performs better in the majority of areas.

SOURCE: CNBC