OpenAI is moving toward a public offering this fall, and the rush around it is already showing up in the private market. Staffers have been selling shares before any IPO, with employees estimated to have offloaded $6.6 billion so far.
That is why people are searching for the OpenAI IPO now: the company is being discussed as one of a cluster of tech listings that could reshape the market in a matter of weeks. OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing to go public this fall, while SpaceX is expected to debut next week on June 12. Together, the three companies could be valued at $4 trillion and generate about $200 billion in proceeds, a scale that would make this one of the biggest bursts of dealmaking in years.
For OpenAI workers with equity, the math is hard to ignore. The company is now estimated to debut somewhere between $850 billion and $1 trillion, far above the $14 billion valuation attached to Joanne Jang when she joined in 2021. Jang, who made Forbes’ Under 30 list in 2025 as OpenAI’s head of product, founded the Model Behavior team and worked on giving ChatGPT a voice and personality before leaving this year to start her own AI lab, Core Automation.
That backdrop helps explain why the cash-out is drawing scrutiny. OpenAI employees have already sold an estimated $6.6 billion in shares on the secondary market, and analysts are asking why so much stock is being sold before the company has even gone public. The answer may be simple: a fall listing could turn paper gains into life-changing money overnight, especially for early staff who joined when OpenAI was still valued at a fraction of today’s estimate.
The timing also puts OpenAI in the same frame as other high-profile alumni-rich companies poised to reward a long tail of early insiders. More than a dozen Under 30 alumni could benefit from the wave of IPOs, and the numbers around OpenAI suggest the biggest payday may still be ahead. What remains unresolved is the one detail that matters most to anyone holding shares: whether the company lands closer to $850 billion or pushes toward $1 trillion when it finally goes public.
