A half-trillion-dollar valuation. The numbers alone are staggering, but when applied to OpenAI, they signal something far more profound than mere market enthusiasm. Following a secondary share sale that saw current and former employees offload $6.6 billion worth of shares, OpenAI’s valuation has surged to $500 billion, a significant leap from its earlier $300 billion mark in 2025. This financial milestone isn’t just about investor confidence; it’s intricately tied to the company’s colossal ambition: the “Stargate” AI infrastructure project.
Decoding the Market Momentum: Beyond the Valuations
Stargate, launched in January 2025 with an initial $500 billion, four-year U.S. infrastructure investment goal, is rapidly expanding its footprint. The project now boasts five new U.S. data center sites across Texas, New Mexico, and Ohio, pushing total planned capacity to nearly 7 gigawatts (GW) and cumulative investment beyond $400 billion. This aggressive build-out is not just capital-intensive; it’s a strategic play in the global race for AI dominance.
The roster of Stargate partners reads like a who’s who of tech and finance. Initial equity funders include SoftBank, OpenAI itself, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, with SoftBank shouldering the financial responsibility while OpenAI steers operations. Technology heavyweights like Arm, Microsoft, and NVIDIA are also foundational to this venture. NVIDIA’s commitment alone stands at an impressive $100 billion, ensuring a steady supply of its crucial data center chips and millions of GPUs. Further reinforcing the supply chain, South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have inked letters of intent to deliver high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, projected to meet OpenAI’s demand for 900,000 semiconductor wafers by 2029.
Financially, OpenAI’s reported $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2025, exceeding 2024’s full-year total by 16%, and a projected $13 billion for the entirety of 2025, underscores the monetization potential. Yet, amidst this bullish narrative, a note of caution emerges. S&P Global analysts observe a lack of investor priority on immediate returns, with profitability not anticipated until 2029. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself acknowledges the inevitable
