OpenAI's record-breaking $500B valuation

PLUS: a16z reveals where startups actually spend on AI

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just claimed a crown that no private company has ever held — a $500B valuation that officially makes it more valuable than SpaceX, ByteDance, and every other privately-held giant on Earth.

But with revenue surging and employees declining to sell billions in available shares, the AI leader’s rocket ship may be just taking off.

Reminder: Our next live workshop is today at 4 PM EST! Join and learn how to create working prototypes in Cursor, without writing any code. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • OpenAI becomes world’s most valuable private company

  • Where startups actually spend on AI

  • Create n8n workflows directly from Claude

  • Google pushes Jules coding agent into terminals

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI just completed a secondary share sale, allowing employees to liquidate $6.6B in stock at a $500B valuation, officially making it the world's most valuable private company and surpassing SpaceX's $456B mark.

The details:

  • Buyers included Thrive Capital, SoftBank, and MGX, with employees who held shares for 2+ years eligible to participate in the tender offer.

  • OpenAI authorized $10.3B in available shares, but employees sold only $6.6B, a gap some company insiders attributed to optimism about future upside.

  • The valuation jumped from $300B in March, following OpenAI generating $4.3B in revenue during the first half of 2025, exceeding all of 2024.

Why it matters: The sale gives OAI employees liquidity to compete with rivals circling with nine-figure pay packages, and there is no shortage of investors trying to get in on the company's massive ambitions. OpenAI now sits at the top of the private company universe, and the scary part is that it still feels like that valuation has a lot higher to go.

TOGETHER WITH LOVART

The Rundown: While everyone scrambles to access the latest AI models individually, Lovart users get them all in one collaborative workspace. From trending models like Nano Banana to powerhouses like Veo 3, Lovart orchestrates multiple AI engines to deliver results no single tool can match.

The world's first design agent offers:

  • Multi-model orchestration with Nano Banana, Veo 3, GPT-Image, and more

  • ChatCanvas collaboration that thinks and iterates with you in real-time

  • Professional design quality that saves time and lowers costs

Try Lovart and join nearly 2M other users experiencing multi-model design collaboration.

AI USAGE RESEARCH

Image source: a16z

The Rundown: Andreessen Horowitz released its AI Spending Report, analyzing transaction patterns from fintech startup Mercury’s 200,000+ customers to show which AI companies are capturing real startup dollars versus just generating traffic.

The details:

  • OpenAI took the top spot, with Anthropic in the second place, and Perplexity (No. 12) and Merlin AI (No. 30) rounding out the list of general assistants.

  • Four vibe coding platforms (Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and Emergent) appear on the list, showing the trend seeping beyond consumers into the enterprise.

  • Creative tools make up the biggest category with 10 featured, including Freepik (No .4), ElevenLabs (No. 5), Kling (No .15), and Canva (No .17).

  • Other trending categories included meeting assistants, AI employees for specific industries/tasks, and agentic tools.

Why it matters: While ChatGPT and Claude at the top of the chart is no surprise, some of the other popular categories are — with vibe coding becoming much more than just a personal tool, and agentic AI platforms starting to proliferate beyond novelty and across actual work use cases.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to generate complete n8n workflow automations by describing what you want in plain English — using Claude Sonnet 4.5 via MCP to build workflows without manually connecting nodes.

Step-by-step:

  1. Install Claude Desktop and Node.js, then open your terminal and run npx n8n-mcp to start the MCP server

  2. In Claude Desktop, go to Settings > Developer > Edit Config and paste the configuration code, adding your n8n URL (from your workflow dashboard) and API key (Settings > n8n API > Create API Key)

  3. Restart Claude Desktop, click the n8n MCP icon in the bottom right, and hit "Enable all tools" to give Claude access to your workflows

  4. Describe your automation to Claude: "Build an n8n workflow that monitors my Gmail for emails with 'invoice' in the subject, extracts the invoice amount using AI, and logs it to a Google Sheet"

  5. Claude will build the automation and give you a direct link to open in n8n

Pro tip: Claude works best with specific requests. Instead of "automate my emails," try "when I get a Slack message with 'urgent,' create a task in Todoist and send me a calendar reminder." The more details you give, the better the workflow.

PRESENTED BY ENCORD

The Rundown: Encord is the universal data layer trusted by the world’s leading AV & ADAS teams, like Woven by Toyota and Zipline. They rely on Encord’s unified workflow to prepare high-quality, labeled multimodal datasets 10x faster, accelerating iteration cycles and deploying production models at scale.

Join Encord’s LiDAR experts on Oct. 28 for a masterclass on how to:

  • Visualize and curate multimodal data, including LiDAR and radar data

  • Automate 3D segmentation of obstacles with single-shot labeling and object tracking

  • Create robust, scalable pipelines for model training and evaluation

Sign up here to join live or catch the replay.

GOOGLE

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google launched Jules Tools, a new command-line interface and public API for its autonomous coding agent, allowing developers to trigger tasks and monitor progress from terminals rather than switching to separate browser windows.

The details:

  • Developers can now control Jules through typed commands in terminal windows, automating repetitive tasks or creating coding assignments.

  • Google opened access to Jules' underlying connections, allowing companies to plug the assistant into workplace tools like Slack and development pipelines.

  • The assistant now remembers programmer preferences and past corrections, and includes tools for managing access to credentials during automated work.

  • Jules also handles tasks in the background on Google's server, allowing devs to focus on their primary workspace instead of monitoring browser tabs.

Why it matters: After launching almost a year ago, Jules has been quiet despite the AI coding space as a whole going parabolic. With the new CLI and API access, Jules’ better integrations into dev workflows could boost adoption — but it also faces no shortage of competition from OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Code, and others.

QUICK HITS

  • ☄️ Comet - Perplexity’s AI-first browser, now generally available

  • ⚙️ Tinker - Thinking Machines’ API for fine-tuning language models

  • 💼 Claude in Slack - New connection to search and reference workspaces

  • ⚡️ IBM Granite 4.0 - New, efficient, hybrid models for enterprise

Perplexity announced the official open launch of its AI-native Comet web browser, now available for free worldwide after an invite-gated initial rollout in July.

OpenAI issued a response and motion to dismiss Musk and xAI’s lawsuit alleging trade secret theft, saying the company “won’t be intimidated by his attempts to bully them.”

Google rolled out Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana) as generally available, with new features including additional aspect ratios and prompt customizations.

The NBA is partnering with AWS to launch Inside the Game, a new platform for TV broadcasts with AI-powered advanced stats, strategy, and player tracking.

IBM launched Granite 4.0, a new family of open, small, efficient LLMs that excel at agentic workflows and enterprise tasks.

Samsung and Korean manufacturer SK Hynix joined OpenAI's Stargate initiative, with a focus on increasing production of memory chips and data centers in the region.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Sam S. in Big Sur, CA:

"I use AI as a coach, particularly for tasks I'm afraid to tackle. I'll identify a goal and then say, "I want to work for 30 minutes every day; I want you to guide me in every step of the process. Be my cheerleader but also a very honest critic." I know AI is sycophantic, but in certain cases, that's really helpful. Just committing to the task in and of itself is a big step forward — crucially, I feel like I'm not doing it alone."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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