Four months ago, Sam Altman got testy with one of his own investors, Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner, in a podcast soundbyte heard round the world. “Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman said. Indeed, he seems to have found plenty of buyers.
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Four months ago, Sam Altman got testy with one of his own investors, Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner, in a podcast soundbyte heard round the world. “Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman said.
Indeed, he seems to have found plenty of buyers.
OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it had raised $122 billion in committed capital at a valuation of $852 billion after the financing. OpenAI says the portion raised from financial investors—$12 billion—was 20% oversubscribed.
But other market signals are a bit weaker, which should worry any individual buying into OpenAI directly through investment banks or indirectly through Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, which is putting private OpenAI stakes in its exchange-traded funds. The biggest checks, of course, came from existing investors and strategic investors, like Amazon and Nvidia, which have more interest in supporting OpenAI as a customer and aren’t necessarily aiming for sterling financial returns.
The most visible indication of soft sentiment in OpenAI is the stock price of SoftBank, which is down 17% this year, despite CEO Masayoshi Son upping its stake in OpenAI. Roughly a quarter of SoftBank’s total asset value is tied to OpenAI, so that’s one of the best ways for investors to approximate a trade for OpenAI ahead of its IPO. It’s at least a better proxy than Microsoft and Amazon, anyway, where the OpenAI stake is much smaller relatively. (Still, SoftBank trades based on its other large holdings, too, like chip designer Arm.)
Then there’s the secondary market for private stocks, where buyers without direct access to the company often need to pay extra fees for the privilege of purchasing private shares, usually through special purpose vehicles. Recently, there appear to be more potential sellers than buyers there.
Financial technology startup Caplight, which collects secondary market transaction data from hundreds of regulated broker-dealers and Securities and Exchange Commission–registered investment advisers, tabulated that investors put $1 billion worth of shares up for sale compared with $200 million worth of buy orders this year through March.
Notably, the “typical seller” has been looking to offload stakes of $50 million or more of preferred stock, “implying institutional investors are seeking liquidity in the secondary market,” said Caplight CEO Javier Avalos. “This is a huge reversal from Q3 and Q4 of 2025, when we saw mostly demand in the market and minimal supply.”
Some of these selling pressures should be expected. The Information and others have widely reported that OpenAI is racing toward an IPO later this year. Investors often want to try to lock in some gains ahead of a listing, where they would face a lockup. Still, OpenAI’s selling pressure far exceeded that of similarly large companies speeding toward IPOs: Anthropic and SpaceX, according to Caplight.
And these approximations of value and sentiment won’t matter as much soon. OpenAI, for its part, says Caplight’s data “is not reflective of the demand for our shares through authorized channels.”
An IPO will end this debate because the price will be set on the open market. Altman’s investors will easily find buyers, though potentially at a lower valuation.
Ultimately, investors in OpenAI’s latest round are giving a company with off-the-charts growth an off-the-charts valuation. A lot has to go right for them to reap a reward.
Space Watch
This evening, NASA blasted astronauts toward the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, a key step toward putting Americans back on the lunar surface.
While SpaceX wasn’t involved in the Artemis II launch, the Elon Musk–led space firm and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are both set to play major roles in future NASA missions aimed at putting humans back on the lunar surface, the next of which is scheduled for 2027. (Wednesday’s launch used a rocket jointly made by traditional aerospace firms, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman.)
Despite SpaceX’s lack of involvement today, I’m sure Musk doesn’t mind this evening’s blast-off drumming up interest in space generally, given that SpaceX is about to go public. On Wednesday, it confidentially filed with U.S. regulators for a public offering, a key step toward an IPO in June that’s likely to be the largest in history.
However, not everything is hunky-dory between SpaceX and NASA. Last fall, then-NASA chief Sean Duffy said that SpaceX was behind schedule in preparing a launch vehicle for upcoming moon missions under a contract it had received in 2021, and that the agency would seek alternative bids from rivals including Blue Origin. NASA’s new leader, Jared Isaacman, seems to have continued the approach, encouraging competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Ultimately, though, NASA may not matter that much for SpaceX’s business. Musk said in February that NASA will be responsible for 5% of SpaceX’s revenue this year. NASA’s total budget has hovered around $25 billion in recent years, while SpaceX brought in about $16 billion in 2025, primarily from its Starlink satellite internet service. If SpaceX is able to keep growing Starlink, the company’s revenue will soon eclipse NASA’s entire budget.
While today’s NASA launch was exciting,investors will be watching another upcoming launch even more closely: the next test of Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation rocket. Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell have both indicated the next Starship test should happen in early April, following its delay from early March. Anyone considering investing in the IPO should be watching closely, as Starship is critical to virtually all of Musk’s plans for SpaceX—from NASA missions to Starlink to data centers in space.—Theo Wayt
In Other News
• An Iranian strike damaged an Amazon Web Services data center in Bahrain, the Financial Times reported.
• Apple turned 50 years old on Wednesday, an occasion the company commemorated with a Paul McCartney concert for employees and a letter to staffers from Tim Cook.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today's episode of TITV in which we speak with one of the investors from our Next GPs list about the Anthropic data leak, and separately, the current state of AI investing.
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