OpenAI preps for IPO in 2026, says ChatGPT must be ‘productivity tool’

OpenAI is focusing employees’ and investors’ attention on its corporate business as the artificial intelligence startup prepares to potentially go public by the end of the year, CNBC has learned.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, held a comprehensive meeting with employees last week and said the company was committed to helping businesses and was “aggressively pushing” toward high-throughput use cases.

OpenAI has ushered in the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and the chatbot now supports over 900 million weekly active users. But the company is still racing to capture market share by breaking away from rivals, especially in the enterprise space Google and Anthropic, which also carries the weight of an IPO.

“Our opportunity now is to take these 900 million users and turn them into high-computing users,” Simo said, according to a partial transcript of the meeting reviewed by CNBC. he said. “We will do this by turning ChatGPT into a productivity tool.”

Wall Street Magazine He was the first to report the meeting, which everyone attended.

OpenAI’s IPO could happen in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a person familiar with the matter. The exact timing could still change, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

CFO Sarah Friar is building OpenAI’s finance team ahead of its launch and hiring Ajmere Dale, OpenAI’s former chief accounting officer. To obstruct, and former CFO Cynthia Gaylor DocuSignearlier this year. As part of his role, Gaylor will oversee investor relations. LinkedIn post.

In December, OpenAI declared a “code red” effort to develop ChatGPT in the face of increasingly stiff competition from Google and Anthropic. The company temporarily withdrew other investments in areas such as healthcare, shopping and advertising.

Simo noted that at the March general meeting, OpenAI acted with the same urgency as in December, but that the company could not declare everything an emergency.

“The main thing for us right now is to stay focused and execute extremely well,” Simo said.

OpenAI is also working to set clearer spending targets after shaking up markets with ambitious infrastructure commitments in late 2025.

The company told investors in February that it was targeting total computing spending of about $600 billion by 2030, rather than the $1.4 trillion figure suggested by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, CNBC previously reported.

OpenAI estimates its total revenue for 2030 will be more than $280 billion, with nearly equal contributions from consumer and enterprise businesses. The $600 billion figure presented by the company is intended to be more directly linked to expected revenue growth.

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