OpenAI is in early talks about a potential secondary sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion, people briefed on the investment discussions said, marking an enormous gain in value for the artificial intelligence leader.

The company is targeting a stock sale in the billions of dollars, the people said, asking to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Existing investors including Thrive Capital have approached OpenAI about buying some of the employee shares, the people said.

OpenAI’s previous valuation stood at $300 billion in a $40 billion financing round led by SoftBank Group Corp. The latest move follows news last week the startup had secured $8.3 billion from a syndicate of investors for a second tranche of that $40 billion financing, which was oversubscribed by about five times, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions.

OpenAI has overseen a spate of recent technology launches, including a new open-source platform, and is preparing the release of its latest GPT-5 model.

The company declined to comment. Thrive representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.