Prime Highlights:

· OpenAI is on track to surpass $20 billion in annual recurring revenue this year.

· Investor confidence remains strong, valuing the company at around $500 billion despite bubble concerns.

Key Highlights:

· OpenAI plans to raise $6 billion through a secondary stock sale.

· The company is also preparing to spend trillions on global data center expansion in the near future.

Key Background:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has suggested that artificial intelligence could be moving into a bubble, drawing comparisons to the dot-com era of the late 1990s. Yet despite cautionary warnings, OpenAI itself continues to post remarkable growth and attract strong investor confidence.

Altman told reporters last week that while investors may be “overexcited” about AI, he believes it is also “the most important thing to happen in a very long time.” His comments come as concerns over inflated valuations ripple across the industry. Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, and Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok have all cautioned about the risk of overinvestment.

Even so, OpenAI’s trajectory remains firmly upward. The company expects its annual recurring revenue to surpass $20 billion this year, even as it remains unprofitable. Investor appetite shows no sign of slowing. OpenAI plans to sell about $6 billion in stock, which would value the company at around $500 billion. Back in March, it announced a new $40 billion funding round and a $300 billion valuation at the time, which became the largest ever round of capital financing ever raised by a privately held technology firm.

The release of OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5, was met with mixed reviews, but customer demand remains strong enough that legacy GPT-4 access has been restored for paying users. Altman has also hinted at OpenAI’s growing ambitions, including consumer hardware, brain-computer interfaces, and potential acquisitions if regulatory conditions create openings. He has further signaled plans to invest trillions of dollars into global data center buildouts in the coming years.

While there are debates about the reasoning behind overvaluation, industry analysts note that the fundamentals of AI infrastructure and semiconductors remain solid. In the case of OpenAI, investor support shows the stability of the company in the long term due to its management and innovativeness. As Altman put it when asked about the company’s future: “AI is the most important thing to happen in a very long time.”