OpenAI files confidentially for IPO - but there's a catch

By William Gavin

'It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,' OpenAI says

OpenAI is the lab behind ChatGPT, which helped kick off the artificial-intelligence boom.

OpenAI just took a step closer to going public, potentially setting up 2026 to be a record-breaking year for IPOs - though the company isn't guaranteeing it'll conduct an offering anytime soon.

The ChatGPT maker said in a statement Monday that it recently filed a confidential version of its draft initial-public-offering paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That news comes just a week after rival artificial-intelligence lab Anthropic publicly announced it had confidentially filed with the regulator, allowing it to get feedback before making its financial statements public.

"We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it," OpenAI said on X.

OpenAI has been working with a few bankers, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, on the IPO process and aims to go public as soon as September, the Wall Street Journal earlier reported. Goldman Sachs previously declined to comment and Morgan Stanley didn't initially respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.

That said, OpenAI on Monday said that it had not made a decision on the timing of its potential offering.

"It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company," OpenAI said. "But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."

OpenAI on Monday also released a blog post co-written by CEO Sam Altman outlining its three main goals, including building an automated AI researcher by March 2028 that can handle a "significant" amount of its research. It also aims to "accelerate the economy" and give "everyone on Earth" access to personal artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a theoretical AI that can operate at or above a human level.

To do that, OpenAI said it was entering its third phase as a company. The central question, the company said, is how to make advanced AI abundant, safe and useful.

"If we get this right, AI can become a foundation for greater productivity, creativity, scientific progress and economic opportunity for the many, and we will achieve our mission: to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity," Altman and co-writer Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's chief scientist, said in the post.

OpenAI in March was valued at $852 billion post-money after raising $122 billion in committed capital in a funding round anchored by Amazon (AMZN), Nvidia (NVDA) and Softbank (JP:9984). Anthropic is now valued at $965 billion after a May funding round, while SpaceX (SPCX) is pursing a public listing that could value the company at $1.75 trillion when shares list on Friday.

If both SpaceX and OpenAI list this year, 2026 will "almost certainly" set a new record for IPO proceeds, the research firm Renaissance Capital told MarketWatch.

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-William Gavin

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06-08-26 1755ET