OpenAI reportedly buys back $7 billion in employee shares in preparation for potential IPO, valuation remains at $852 billion

According to EqualOcean, a source has revealed that OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell company shares worth approximately $7 billion, preparing for a potential initial public offering (IPO). Two sources said that in this tender offer transaction, OpenAI repurchased shares from current and former employees, rather than involving external investors as in the past—previously, OpenAI had invited investors such as Thrive Capital and SoftBank Group to purchase shares held by employees. According to the sources, this deal values the startup at $852 billion, consistent with its latest funding round.

Reportedly, this stock tender offer began preparations after OpenAI completed its record-breaking $122 billion financing round in March. The transaction will help the company address recent liquidity pressures, enabling employees to sell part of their holdings and realize some gains ahead of a potential large-scale IPO.

Secondary market share sales have become part of OpenAI’s pre-listing strategy. In October last year, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion share tender offer, at which point the company's valuation was $500 billion. In addition, OpenAI completed a $1.5 billion share tender offer in 2024.

Such transactions are increasingly common in Silicon Valley. Stripe, Databricks, SpaceX and other companies that have delayed going public have also provided liquidity to employees through employee stock sale offers or secondary market transactions. The Information, citing Carta data, reported that current and former employees of private companies are expected to sell about $1.7 billion in shares in 2025, more than $200 million higher than the combined total in 2024 and 2023.

The later a company goes public, the more likely employee stock options and restricted shares become tax and cash flow issues. Caplight CEO Javier Avalos said that OpenAI employees have already fully vested and held shares for some time. At this stage, the company feels the pressure to provide liquidity to employees. Company-led employee share tender offers are the main channel for employees to cash out equity before an IPO. In addition, some employees sell shares through individual secondary transactions.

However, employee stock sales can only alleviate internal liquidity pressure and cannot solve the capital needs of frontier model companies. The Information points out that for OpenAI and its competitor Anthropic, an IPO would enable them to raise tens of billions of dollars for training and running models. Both companies are expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on compute services in the future.

Not all employees are willing to sell before the IPO. The Information noted that employee share sales at Anthropic earlier this year ultimately ended up smaller than the previously reported investor intentions to buy $5 to $6 billion worth of shares. One possible reason is that some employees believe it would be more profitable to sell after the IPO. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic have also cracked down on unauthorized stock sales in recent months, such as private transfers through special purpose vehicles. For AI companies preparing to go public or continue large-scale financing, regulating equity trading is itself a part of pre-IPO preparations.

In addition, according to reports, OpenAI has significantly retreated from its initial ambition of "going public as early as this fall" and is now clearly inclined to delay its IPO schedule until 2027. Behind this delay is a direct clash between CEO Sam Altman's insistence on a minimum $1 trillion valuation and the harsh reality of the market.

The wild price swings of SpaceX (SPCX.US) after its listing have been a direct psychological deterrent for OpenAI’s IPO plan. Bankers advising OpenAI on its IPO have clearly warned that recent tech stock volatility and the sharp drop in SpaceX’s share price after listing could seriously dampen retail investor enthusiasm for OpenAI’s shares. One source noted that in talks with the company last week, OpenAI’s advisers candidly said that retail investors may show little enthusiasm for its stock.

OpenAI’s valuation dilemma is at the core of the delay decision. In March 2026, OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round, pushing its post-money valuation to $852 billion, already making it the world's highest-valued unlisted tech company. However, this figure falls far short of Altman’s expectations. According to sources, Altman has been pressing his team of advisers, including bankers and lawyers, to find a way to push the company’s IPO valuation to $1 trillion.

The adviser team gave Altman two options: first, postpone the IPO until 2027, waiting for market conditions to improve while moving the company’s financial performance closer to the $1 trillion valuation target; second, go public before the end of 2026 but accept a lower valuation. According to someone familiar with the matter, when advisers presented these options, Altman said any plan to lower the valuation below $1 trillion was "unacceptable."

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s financial situation is also testing investor patience. The company posted a net loss of $38.5 billion last year, mainly due to massive spending on computational infrastructure, R&D, and organizational restructuring. According to The Information, OpenAI burned $3.7 billion in cash in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of its $5.7 billion in revenue during the same period. The company estimates that it will invest $60 billion in computing and hardware by 2030.

According to sources, in recent months, some of OpenAI’s major investors have privately expressed concern about the company’s cash burn rate relative to its growth, while other investors are hedging their bets on OpenAI by investing in Anthropic.

OpenAI's postponement is not unique. Analysts point out that the IPOs of large model companies originally scheduled to launch in the second half of 2026 may be pushed back to the first half of 2027 due to declining market risk appetite and uncertain liquidity environments. The adjustment in IPO timing means the company’s highly anticipated listing will be postponed significantly from the previously expected timeline of this fall.

The most direct interpretation of the 2027 timeline is that OpenAI has the ability to wait. By delaying, the company can continue to expand usage, refine pricing, and seek a more stable business mix among consumer products, enterprise tools, and infrastructure partners before coming under the quarterly discipline of the public market. According to the latest reports, OpenAI’s annualized recurring revenue in July has already surpassed the entire total for the second quarter.