In September, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was in early talks to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion.

It is a bridge round since Sam Altman has said OpenAI will not go public this year. 

The more interesting part is what happened before this round, though. In thirteen months, OpenAI has been priced four times, from $300 billion to a potential $1.4 trillion, and hundreds of its employees have already sold billions of dollars in stock. 

All of it happened in private, where most investors had no way to take part.

If you hold USVC, you own exposure to OpenAI.

Through a fund we invested in.

That fund backed Statsig, a product experimentation startup, and in September 2025, OpenAI acquired Statsig for about $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal priced at OpenAI's then $300 billion valuation.

The fund's Statsig shares became OpenAI shares, which means our exposure to Statsig became exposure to OpenAI. 

We bought into that fund after the acquisition was announced but before the deal was finalized. That gave us exposure to OpenAI at a price tied to the Statsig deal, well below where OpenAI has been valued since.

It’s the same approach that got us exposure to SpaceX ahead of its IPO. We invested in xAI through a special purpose vehicle, and when SpaceX acquired xAI in February, that position converted into SpaceX shares.

The reported valuation walk over the last year:

That’s roughly $1.1 trillion in valuation added in thirteen months, without shares trading on a public exchange.

When SpaceX listed in June, we wrote that the IPO is increasingly becoming the last chapter of access rather than the first. OpenAI is a similar story only on a faster clock. SpaceX went from $350 billion to $1.75 trillion in eighteen months. OpenAI covered almost the same distance in a year.

Whenever OpenAI does go public, most of that growth may already have happened in private. 

And the revenue run rate behind that price has grown even faster. In March, OpenAI said it was generating $2 billion in revenue per month. Bloomberg reported the run rate topped $40 billion in August. And at the start of October, Axios reported it was nearing $70 billion, up more than 70% since the start of the third quarter.

That’s roughly triple the revenue run rate since March. And yet, over the same stretch, the valuation rose about 1.6 times.

Thirteen months of rising prices tell you what investors have been willing to pay, not what it’s worth. 

Whether OpenAI is worth that price depends on a few things that haven’t been settled yet.

Private valuations can rise and fall, so there is no guarantee this is sustainable.

We cannot comment on the mark of any specific position, but our general methodology is to carry private companies at their last priced round.

OpenAI's last priced round closed in March at $852 billion. The round under discussion is $1.4 trillion. 

Nothing is closed. Terms can change. 

And because USVC is an evergreen fund, an OpenAI IPO wouldn't force us to sell. We can keep holding, or move the position into the liquid sleeve that helps support our quarterly repurchase offers, at the Board's discretion.

The OpenAI IPO has not happened yet. But the wealth creation may already be here for early investors and employees.

In October 2025, more than 600 current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in stock. The average payout was $11 million. The Wall Street Journal called it a sneak peek of what comes after OpenAI and Anthropic list.

If you know someone at one of these companies, you've probably wondered where you'd be if you had taken that job.

But look at the bet those employees made. Most of their upside was tied to a single company, and they could only sell when that company let them.

That sale came with limits: up to $30 million per employee, and only while it was open. Private-market cash can come out in windows, which (ironically) is somewhat how USVC's quarterly repurchases work.

And not every grant looks like that $11 million average. Liquidation preferences put investors first in line when a company exits, so a sale at a big number can still leave employees with far less than their grants suggested.

Mathematically: Nearly everyone.

When an estimated OpenAI cap table circulated in April, the early winners were easy to spot. Khosla Ventures turned about $50 million into roughly $1.5 billion. Sound Ventures, the firm Ashton Kutcher co-founded, turned around $30 million into about $1.3 billion.

For everyone else, there were two ways to get into OpenAI before it went public: be an accredited investor with deep connections, or work there.

Most private offerings are limited to accredited investors. The SEC's most recent review found 18.5% of US households qualified. The other 81.5% could not buy a share of OpenAI on principle at $300 billion, or $500 billion, or $852 billion.

Funds weren't a way around it either. Until 2025, regulators took the position that registered funds investing in private funds could only sell to accredited investors. When that changed, a fund like USVC became possible.

We believe you shouldn't have to work at OpenAI to own a piece of it. So, we built USVC for the rest of us to have a way in. $500 minimum. Purchase any business day at NAV.

A lot of “smart people” are picking sides.

OpenAI's reported revenue run rate is nearing $70 billion. Anthropic’s reported revenue run rate was on track to pass $100 billion this year. One is targeting $1.4 trillion, the other more than $2 trillion.

USVC has exposure to both.

Picking a side is a bet on one company, but venture's math works against that. 

For example, roughly 1 in 200 startups become the kind of company that drives most of the returns, holding 200 gives you about a 60% chance of owning one. Holding 500 gets you to about 90%.

An OpenAI employee holds one. USVC offers exposure to 64+ as of August 30, 2026.

USVC invests in portfolio companies directly, through private funds and special purpose vehicles. For important information and USVC holdings, please see https://usvc.com/portfolio.

What happens to the money from OpenAI's tender, and from the IPOs still to come?

History says it does not sit still.

The PayPal alumni funded Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Founders Fund. Early employees become angels. Angels become fund managers.

We believe the next generation of companies can get financed by the last mega-unicorn.

A Federal Reserve study using Census employment data found that going public measurably increases the rate at which employees leave for startups.

Funds recycle it too. In June, we wrote that venture has been starved of exits. The cash that flows back to the people who fund venture funds has run negative by roughly $197 billion since 2022.

Venture calls this recycling capital. When a private company turns into cash, it returns money to the funds that backed it early. Those funds return it to their investors, and much of it goes back into new companies.

That's part of why USVC backs early-stage managers. No fund can reach every promising founder directly, and the managers who do may often see companies years before anyone else. When this money comes back into venture, early-stage funds may often be where it lands first.

OpenAI’s next price will make headlines, and so will its IPO, whenever it comes. Most of the growth behind those headlines may have happened in private, over the last thirteen months and the years before them.

The people who captured it were early employees and investors with access. We’d like that list to be longer.

Shares of USVC are available to U.S. investors, starting at $500, at usvc.com. Alongside OpenAI, the fund holds exposure to Anthropic, Supabase, and Mercury, among others.

— Ankur

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