- OpenAI completed a $7 billion employee share buyback at an $852 billion valuation.
- Unlike prior tenders, OpenAI funded the deal itself rather than relying on outside investors.
- The valuation held flat, a sign a public listing may not be imminent.
OpenAI has completed a roughly $7 billion secondary share sale, allowing current and former employees to cash out their stock at the company’s $852 billion valuation. Bloomberg broke the story, and CNBC and TechCrunch have since confirmed both figures.
In its last two employee tenders, OpenAI brought in outside buyers, Thrive Capital and SoftBank among them, to purchase the shares. This time, according to two people familiar with the matter, OpenAI used its own cash.
Why OpenAI funded this one alone
Bringing in outside buyers means new names on the cap table and a fresh price signal set by whoever is willing to pay. Funding the buyback internally avoids both. It also says something about OpenAI’s balance sheet: the company closed a $122 billion round in March 2026, and apparently has enough left over that it did not need investors to cover a $7 billion repurchase.
Tech Funding News covered that round when OpenAI closed the largest private financing in Silicon Valley history, anchored by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank.
A tender offer, unlike a primary round, does not put new operating capital into the company. It just gives employees, many of whom hold most of their compensation in illiquid private stock, a way to turn some of that paper wealth into cash without waiting on an IPO.
Unlike a conventional funding round, the transaction does not provide OpenAI with fresh operating capital. Instead, it creates liquidity for employees holding private shares, while allowing them to realise part of the enormous increase in the company’s value without waiting for a public listing.
The valuation didn’t move
The tender has been in motion since the $122 billion round closed.
Before that, OpenAI ran a $6.6 billion employee sale in October 2025 at a $500 billion valuation, with Thrive Capital, SoftBank and T. Rowe Price buying in, which TFN reported at the time. Before that, a smaller $1.5 billion tender to SoftBank in November 2024, when the company was worth $157 billion.
Each of those increased the number. This one didn’t. $852 billion in, $852 billion out, the first flat print across OpenAI’s run of tenders. TechCrunch and others read that as a sign an IPO isn’t close, even with OpenAI’s confidential SEC filing in June 2026 still on the books.
Sam Altman told staff he expects OpenAI to go public within a year; other reporting suggests it could slip to 2027. He also told employees in July 2026 that the company had not had its best 12 months, an unusually blunt line from a chief executive gearing up for a listing.
OpenAI isn’t the only one racing toward Wall Street
Anthropic is running the same playbook. It has also confidentially filed for an IPO, and TFN reported in June 2026 that it raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, briefly passing OpenAI before OpenAI’s own number caught back up.
The two are also cutting prices against each other even as their infrastructure bills climb, which matters more the closer either gets to having to answer to public shareholders.
TFN covered OpenAI’s reported $1 trillion IPO ambition after Anthropic’s filing went public, noting OpenAI is generating around $2 billion a month in revenue while still losing money at scale.
Funding its own buyback this month, rather than handing the job to investors, looks like OpenAI keeping as much control as it can over that story before Wall Street gets to weigh in.
