OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an initial public offering as soon as Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal, in what could be one of the largest public market debuts in history.
The ChatGPT maker, valued at $852 billion, is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and is targeting an IPO as early as September
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OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an initial public offering as soon as Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal, in what could be one of the largest public market debuts in history.
"As part of normal governance, we regularly evaluate a range of strategic options," an OpenAI spokesperson told The Journal. "Our focus remains on execution."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hopes the company will be ready to list by September, according to TechCrunch. CFO Sarah Friar has previously told CNBC that behaving like a public company is simply "good hygiene" for an organization of OpenAI's scale, while stopping short of committing to any dates.
The IPO push comes days after OpenAI cleared a significant legal hurdle. Earlier this week, a federal jury determined that Elon Musk's claims against the ChatGPT maker were time-barred, delivering OpenAI a courtroom victory over its co-founder-turned-adversary. Musk has said he plans to appeal.
OpenAI is entering public markets amid intensifying competitive pressure. The company missed internal targets for both revenue and user growth, with Friar warning colleagues that sluggish revenue growth could limit the company's ability to honor its data center commitments. Rival Anthropic, meanwhile, disclosed $30 billion in annualized revenue in April and is now seeking a fresh round of funding that would value it at $900 billion, potentially surpassing OpenAI.
OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round at a post-money valuation of $852 billion, the largest in private market history, and plans to spend $600 billion over the next five years on semiconductors and data centers. Even at that pace of private fundraising, the math requires public markets.
The timing also puts OpenAI on a collision course with SpaceX in the public markets. SpaceX, which became a direct AI competitor when it merged with xAI, was expected to release its own IPO paperwork as soon as Wednesday, with Goldman Sachs tapped to lead that deal as well.
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