OpenAI is in early talks to organise a secondary share sale that could value the artificial-intelligence company at roughly $500 billion, people familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg and Reuters. The transaction would give current and former employees the opportunity to sell several billion dollars’ worth of equity, ahead of any eventual initial public offering. The mooted valuation represents a steep rise from the $300 billion level attached to a SoftBank-led primary round announced in April. Existing investors, including Thrive Capital, have approached the San Francisco-based group about buying employee shares, the sources said. OpenAI declined to comment. Investor appetite has been fuelled by rapid operating momentum. ChatGPT now attracts about 700 million weekly active users, and OpenAI’s annualised revenue has doubled this year to roughly $12 billion, with management targeting $20 billion by the end of 2025, according to one source. The planned tender offer coincides with heightened product anticipation: OpenAI has scheduled a 7 August livestream widely expected to unveil its next-generation GPT-5 language model. Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has previously said such advances, coupled with rising demand, may eventually prompt a broader restructuring and public listing, but only when market conditions are favourable.