OpenAI files for IPO as AI companies race to go public

OpenAI has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ashley Capoot and Kate Rooney report for CNBC that the company, valued at $852 billion, is targeting a public debut as early as the fourth quarter of this year. The filing comes one week after rival Anthropic made a similar confidential submission.

A confidential filing lets a company submit its financial documents to regulators before they become publicly available. OpenAI has been working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the process. The company said it has not yet decided on a final timeline.

A crowded IPO window

The filing puts OpenAI in direct competition with Anthropic and SpaceX, which kicked off its investor roadshow last week. SpaceX’s IPO documents name OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as key competitors in AI. Anthropic closed a recent funding round at a $965 billion valuation, edging ahead of OpenAI.

OpenAI also plans a tender offer to let employees sell shares at the current valuation, easing short-term pressure for liquidity.

CEO Sam Altman will face tough questions from investors about the company’s finances. OpenAI has raised more than $180 billion in total funding and continues to spend heavily on computing infrastructure. In a blog post, Altman framed this moment as “the third phase of OpenAI,” focused on making advanced AI widely accessible and affordable.

ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users. To sharpen its focus ahead of the IPO, OpenAI has shut down side projects, including its short-form video app Sora, and is investing in its enterprise business and coding assistant Codex.

The IPO push also follows a three-week court battle between Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. An advisory jury found that Musk waited too long to bring claims that OpenAI broke its original nonprofit commitments. A federal judge adopted that verdict.