OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks between meetings at the Capitol building in Washington, U.S. on July 29, 2026.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
OpenAI CNBC confirmed on Monday that it completed a secondary stock sale totaling about $7 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell shares at a valuation of the company at $852 billion.
Preparations for the tender offer have been underway since OpenAI closed a record $122 billion funding round in March. The deal will help ease short-term liquidity pressures, allowing employees to cash out some of their stock holdings ahead of the company’s potentially large IPO.
Bloomberg first reported the $7 billion figure.
OpenAI exploded into the mainstream following the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, and has grown into one of the fastest-growing private companies on the planet in the years since. The company confidentially filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, but has not disclosed a formal timeline for its debut. Rival Anthropic is in a similar position.
Secondary sales are part of OpenAI’s pre-IPO strategy. The company completed a $6.6 billion tender offer in October at a valuation of $500 billion, followed by a $1.5 billion tender offer in 2024.
—CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report
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