OpenAI confidentially files for IPO, prepping Wall Street for AI debut
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, pictured, speaks with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at an event in Tokyo on February 3, 2025.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Owned by OpenAI secretly filed He joined the party for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a week after Anthropic did the same and days before Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public.
The artificial intelligence company, valued at over $850 billion, is preparing to go public in the fourth quarter of this year. A confidential filing allows the company to submit its financial information to regulators for review before it is made available to the public and potential investors.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC in April that it’s “good hygiene” for a business the size of OpenAI to “look, feel and act” like a publicly traded company, but did not comment on a specific IPO timeline. OpenAI said in a statement on Monday that it had not decided on the timing.
OpenAI’s full article is as follows:
We recently filed a confidential S-1. We’re waiting for it to leak, so we’re just announcing it. We haven’t decided on the timing yet; It may take a while because as a private company there are things we want to do that are probably easier. But it’s a complex set of trade-offs, and it gives us the option of going public sooner if that’s for the best.
OpenAI also plans to facilitate a tender offer that would allow employees to sell their shares at the latest valuation of $852 billion post-money and ease short-term liquidity pressure, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the details are private.
As CNBC previously reported, the company is working with banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the application. These are the two companies listed at the top of SpaceX’s file.
OpenAI broke into the mainstream following the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022 and has since become one of the most valuable private companies in the world. ChatGPT now supports more than 900 million weekly active users but faces increasingly stiff competition from rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. Google and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which merged with xAI earlier this year.
SpaceX began a roadshow last week. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google All are named as SpaceX’s “major competitors” in the field of artificial intelligence, according to the filing.
A week ago, Anthropic announced its confidential IPO filing. Shortly before that, the company closed a funding round. $965 billion valuationIt topped OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion at the end of March.
Depending on how SpaceX’s offer is received, Anthropic and OpenAI may be rushing to outdo each other due to the massive amounts of capital they’re trying to raise.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will be under pressure to explain the company’s situation to investors, especially regarding its financials. OpenAI has raised more than $180 billion in funding and is still burning cash as it works to secure computing and build infrastructure to train and run AI models.
One blog post On Monday, Altman introduced what he called “the third phase of OpenAI.” The first, he wrote, is to conduct research into artificial general intelligence. The second was to become a “product company” and learn how people use its tools.
“We are now entering phase three,” he wrote. “The economy is starting to reshape around AI. The question now is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and easy enough for every person and organization to benefit from it.”
OpenAI has been trying to emphasize focus and discipline within the company in recent months, shutting down fringe projects like Sora, the company’s short-form video app. The company is also investing in its enterprise business, as well as its coding assistant product Codex, which competes directly with Anthropic’s popular Claude Code offering.
Altman wrote: a post on x In April, “it feels like the codex is having a conversation moment.”
SpaceX and OpenAI’s IPO efforts come less than a month after Musk and Altman went through a bitter three-week court battle.
An advisory jury said Musk, who first filed suit against OpenAI and Altman in 2024, waited too long to press claims that they had reneged on vows to keep the company a nonprofit. The federal judge immediately accepted the jury’s verdict. Musk said in a post on X that the judge and jury “never actually decided on the merits of the case, they just decided based on calendar techniques.”
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