OpenAI will let employees sell some stock after its monster fundraising round

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Workers at OpenAI may soon get the opportunity to sell some of their shares in the company, according to a company memo seen by The Information.

The move to allow employees to cash in follows the ChatGPT creator’s massive $6.6 billion fundraising round. The company now has “the ability to offer a tender event to give qualifying employees a liquidity option,” Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, said in the memo, per The Information’s report.

The company is still ironing out details, with information to be shared with employees later, Friar added.

The latest funding round, which was spearheaded by the VC firm Thrive Capital, nearly doubled OpenAI’s valuation, from $86 billion to $156 billion as of Wednesday.

Other investors included Microsoft, which invested nearly $1 billion, and Nvidia, which invested around $100 million, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

The company, led by Sam Altman, made headlines last week as a top executive made a public exit.

Mira Murati left the company last Wednesday, the latest in a string of profiles of high-level execs and researchers as reports swirl of internal divisions at the company as it prepares to become a for-profit entity after years of operating as a nonprofit that prioritized AI research.