OpenAI is holding informal discussions with Wall Street banks about a potential initial public offering, positioning itself in a race against rival Anthropic to become the first major generative AI company to tap public markets. The ChatGPT maker has expanded its finance team with key hires including chief accounting officer Ajmere Dale and corporate business finance officer Cynthia Gaylor, who will oversee investor relations. Berber Jin, Corrie Driebusch and Kate Clark report for the Wall Street Journal.
OpenAI executives have privately expressed concerns about Anthropic beating them to an IPO. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI leaders, has told financial partners it is open to listing by the end of this year. The startup’s sales are soaring thanks to its viral coding agent Claude Code, and it is raising a funding round likely to exceed an initial 10 billion dollar target.
Both companies are losing billions of dollars annually while building new AI models. Anthropic expects to break even in 2028, two years earlier than OpenAI.
“Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%. Am I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways, I am, and in some ways I think it’d be really annoying,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on the Big Technology podcast in December.
OpenAI is simultaneously pursuing a pre-IPO fundraising campaign seeking to raise over 100 billion dollars at an 830 billion dollar valuation. SoftBank is discussing investing about 30 billion dollars, while Amazon may invest up to 50 billion dollars.
