ChatGPT firm OpenAI could be valued at $500bn in share sale; Honda Motor profits halve as tariffs bite – business live

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Honda Motor quarterly profit halves as tariffs bite

Profits at Japanese automarket Honda have halved in the last quarter, as Donald Trump’s trade war hit their earnings.

Honda, which is Japan’s second-largest carmaker, has reported quarterly operating profit of ¥244.2bn (£1.24bn) for April-June, missing analyst forecasts of ¥311.7bn.

Honda said the 27.5% tariffs on auto imports imposed by the US, pulled down its operating profit for the quarter by about ¥125bn.

But the automaker said the impact from the tariffs on its full-year operating profit was smaller than it had estimated in May. It now expects a ¥450bn yen hit for the year, compared to ¥650bn forecast previously.

But in better news, Honda now believes tariffs will have less impact on its full-year operating profits than previously forecast. It now expects a ¥450bn hit this year, down from ¥650bn forecast previously.

The company raised its full-year operating profit forecast to 700 billion yen from 500 billion yen, and said it expected the yen to trade at a weaker rate than it had previously estimated, Reuters reports.

Last month, the US and Japan agreed a trade deal under which tariffs on Japanese cars would drop to 15%. However, a timeframe for the change to go into effect was not announced; yesterday, Japan’s top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa headed to Washington to try to hammer this out…

Introduction: OpenAI in talks for share sale at $500bn valuation

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

The artificial intelligence boom is continuing to excite investors, creating the possibility of huge earnings for the companies and individuals at the heart of the AI race.

Overnight, news has broken that OpenAI, the group behind the ChatGPT chatbot, is in talks about a share sale that would value the company at $500bn.

That would be a serious jump on OpenAI’s previous valuation of $300bn, set in a financing round in March, and underline its status as one of the largest privately held companies in the world.

The talks centre on a potential sale of stock for current and former employees, Bloomberg reports, adding that existing investors including Thrive Capital have approached OpenAI about buying some of these shares. As OpenAI isn’t listed on the stock market, such a secondary stock sale would allow present and ex-staff to cash in.

The mooted share sale comes as companies race to test, and roll out, artificial intelligence systems, which has sent the value of chipmaker Nvidia surging to over $4tn last month.

Shares in Palantir, the software analytics and AI company, jumped almost 8% yesterday after it beat Wall Street estimates and hiked its full-year guidance due to the artificial intelligence boom.

OpenAI is riding this wave too. The Financial Times reports that OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue — a measure of expected revenue from subscriptions commonly used by start-ups — has surged to $12bn, and the company is apparently expecting $20bn or more in ARR by the end of 2025.

Yesterday, OpenAI launched new freely available artificial intelligence models, in a challenge to rivals including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek.

The ChatGPT developer has announced two “open weight” large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company was excited to add to a stack of freely available AI models “based on democratic values … and for wide benefit”, adding:

“We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible.”