OpenAI is in talks to let current and former employees sell about $6 billion of stock to a group of investors that includes SoftBank, Thrive Capital and Dragoneer, according to people familiar with the plan relayed on social media and in press reports. The proposed secondary transaction would lift the artificial-intelligence company’s valuation to roughly $500 billion, from about $300 billion at its last tender offer, positioning OpenAI among the most highly valued private firms globally. The prospective deal comes as adoption of OpenAI’s new flagship model, GPT-5, drives fresh demand. Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said API traffic doubled within 48 hours of the model’s 7 August release and that ChatGPT is approaching 700 million weekly active users—four times last year’s level. GPT-5 has gained particular traction with corporate developers seeking lower-cost reasoning and coding tools, helping to cement OpenAI’s position as Microsoft’s most important AI partner. The rollout has not been seamless. Altman acknowledged the company “screwed up” aspects of the launch after users complained that GPT-5’s tone felt overly formal and that the earlier GPT-4o model had been removed without warning. OpenAI has since reinstated GPT-4o as a legacy option, introduced ‘Fast’ and ‘Thinking’ modes to balance speed and depth, and lifted usage limits for paid subscribers to as many as 3,000 messages a week. Altman also emphasised the importance of India, calling it OpenAI’s second-largest and fastest-growing market and saying GPT-5 was refined with extensive feedback from Indian users to improve multilingual support and reduce costs. The company’s rapid international growth and expanding enterprise footprint underpin investor interest in the planned share sale, which would give staff liquidity while supplying OpenAI with additional capital for the intensive computing infrastructure Altman says will require “billions” of dollars.