OpenAI IPO
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Last reviewed
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The OpenAI IPO refers to a reported and prospective initial public offering by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, rather than a completed stock market listing. Beginning around May 2026, several financial news outlets reported that OpenAI was preparing to file confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering, with some reports pointing to a possible listing later in 2026 at a valuation that could reach or exceed $1 trillion.[1][2][3] As of this article's writing in June 2026, OpenAI had not publicly confirmed an IPO, no public prospectus had been released, and no shares had been sold. Everything below describes what news organizations reported, not an accomplished transaction.
A confidential filing, if it occurred, would not be public. Under SEC rules a qualifying company can submit a draft registration statement for confidential staff review and only make its full financials public roughly 15 days before launching an investor roadshow.[1][3] The specifics of any OpenAI filing, including the figures inside it, are therefore not verifiable from public documents and are reported here strictly as claims attributed to news sources.
On May 20 and 21, 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI was preparing to file confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC, possibly "as soon as" that week, a report that Bloomberg and CNBC quickly followed.[1][2] According to those accounts, OpenAI was working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters, with JPMorgan Chase also said to be involved.[1][2] On May 29, 2026, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI had discussed adding Citigroup and JPMorgan to a bank lineup that already included Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, while cautioning that the talks were ongoing and might not result in those banks joining.[4]
The reported timeline pointed to a confidential draft filing in late May 2026 and a possible public listing as early as September 2026, though several outlets noted OpenAI had been weighing an IPO as far back as the fourth quarter of the prior year.[1][3] Reports also indicated internal disagreement over pacing, with chief executive Sam Altman said to favor a faster timeline than some finance leaders.[3] OpenAI's public posture was cautious. The company offered statements to the effect that, as part of normal governance, it regularly evaluates a range of strategic options and that its focus remains on execution.[3]
An IPO would not have been possible under OpenAI's original structure. The company was founded as a nonprofit, and even after creating a capped-profit arm it operated under constraints that made a conventional public listing difficult. That changed in late 2025.
On October 28, 2025, OpenAI completed a recapitalization that converted its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group PBC, controlled by a nonprofit renamed the OpenAI Foundation.[5][6] The deal valued the enterprise at roughly $500 billion at the time and gave Microsoft a stake of about 27 percent, worth approximately $135 billion.[5][6] Coverage of the restructuring noted that it "lifts a key restriction on OpenAI's ability to raise capital," which is the structural change that later reporting framed as a precondition for any IPO.[6]
The same agreement reshaped the Microsoft relationship in other ways. Microsoft gave up its right of first refusal to supply OpenAI's computing, and in exchange OpenAI contracted to purchase an incremental $250 billion in Microsoft Azure cloud services.[5][6] Microsoft retained access to OpenAI's models and research IP through 2032 or until an independent panel verifies artificial general intelligence, whichever comes first.[6] The recapitalization received a "statement of no objection" from the Delaware attorney general, and the California attorney general said his office would not oppose it.[6] At the reported IPO valuation of about $1 trillion, news outlets estimated Microsoft's roughly 27 percent stake could be worth on the order of $270 billion before dilution, with the OpenAI Foundation's stake worth a comparable amount.[7]
Public claims about OpenAI's finances come from company statements and press reporting, not from any audited prospectus.
OpenAI's last private valuation before the IPO reports was about $852 billion, set in March 2026 when the company closed a roughly $122 billion funding round, with anchor commitments reported from Amazon ($50 billion), NVIDIA ($30 billion), and SoftBank ($30 billion).[2][4] The reported IPO target was that the company "could be valued at up to $1 trillion by the time it goes public."[1][7]
On the revenue side, chief financial officer Sarah Friar has said OpenAI's annual recurring revenue tripled to more than $20 billion in 2025, and the company has described a run rate of roughly $2 billion per month, which annualizes to about $24 billion.[8] Subsequent reports put the figure higher as the year progressed, with the company said to have crossed $25 billion annualized in February 2026 and reportedly topping $30 billion later in the spring.[2] Profitability is another matter. The Information reported that OpenAI generated roughly $5.7 billion to $6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026 while running a deeply negative operating margin (reported at around minus 122 percent), and OpenAI's own internal forecasts have anticipated multibillion dollar losses for 2026 as it spends heavily on compute and data centers.[7][9] These figures are reported estimates and have not been confirmed in an audited public filing.
The table below summarizes the principal reported figures. Every entry is a press or company claim, not a verified prospectus disclosure.
| Item | Reported figure | Source basis |
|---|---|---|
| Last private valuation | About $852 billion (March 2026) | Press reports of funding round[2][4] |
| Reported IPO valuation target | Up to about $1 trillion | Press reports[1][7] |
| Revenue run rate | About $2 billion per month (around $24 billion annualized), early 2026 | Company statements / CFO[8] |
| Q1 2026 revenue | Roughly $5.7 to $6 billion | The Information, via press[7][9] |
| Microsoft stake | About 27 percent (about $135 billion at $500 billion valuation) | Restructuring disclosures[5][6] |
| Reported lead underwriters | Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (JPMorgan involved; Citigroup, JPMorgan discussed) | Press reports[1][2][4] |
| Reported listing window | As early as September 2026 | Press reports[1][3] |
The reporting describes a fast-moving and contingent process. The sequence runs from the October 2025 recapitalization that removed the structural barrier, through the March 2026 funding round at about $852 billion, to the May 2026 reports of an imminent confidential filing and a possible September listing.[1][2][5]
Several caveats deserve emphasis. A confidential filing is a procedural step, not a guarantee that a company will go public; it preserves optionality and can be delayed or abandoned depending on market conditions and SEC review. The bank lineup was reported as still being assembled. The valuation figure of $1 trillion was described as a possible target rather than a priced deal. And the underlying financials, while large, paired rapid revenue growth with substantial losses, a profile that public market investors may scrutinize closely. Anthropic, a rival lab discussed below, used cautious language in its own filing announcement that captures the general posture, noting that any offering "will depend on market conditions and other factors."[10] None of the OpenAI figures here should be read as audited or final.
If completed, an OpenAI IPO would extend a wave of public market activity among AI companies.
The AI cloud provider CoreWeave went public on the Nasdaq in March 2025, pricing at $40 per share, below its expected range, and raising about $1.5 billion at an implied valuation near $23 billion.[11] It was described at the time as the largest U.S. technology IPO since 2021 and was jointly led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs, the same banks recurring in the OpenAI reports.[11] CoreWeave's debut was muted on day one but the stock rose sharply in subsequent sessions.
OpenAI's closest model-building rival, Anthropic, moved on a parallel track. On June 1, 2026, Anthropic announced it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC for a proposed IPO.[10] Reporting around that filing put Anthropic's valuation near $1 trillion following a Series H round at about $965 billion, with a revenue run rate the company described as exceeding $47 billion, up from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025.[10] Coverage framed the two filings as setting up an IPO season that could pit the two largest AI labs against each other in the public markets.[10]
The contrast among these three is instructive. CoreWeave is an infrastructure business that sells GPU capacity, a more conventional capital-intensive model that markets have an easier time pricing. OpenAI and Anthropic are frontier model developers whose enormous reported revenue growth is matched by enormous spending on compute, which makes their path to profitability the central open question for any prospective investor. Whether OpenAI ultimately follows through with a listing, and on what terms, remained unresolved as of mid-2026.