OpenAI has submitted a confidential S-1 filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, formally taking the first official step towards what would be one of the most consequential public listings in technology history, even as the company cautioned on Monday that a stock market debut may still be some time away.
OpenAI's Confidential IPO Filing Arrives One Week After Rival Anthropic Made the Same Move
The ChatGPT developer announced the filing in a characteristically brief blog post, one week after its principal competitor Anthropic disclosed its own confidential S-1 submission on 1 June.
The two back-to-back filings from the world's most closely watched artificial intelligence laboratories have intensified speculation about which company will reach the public market first, even as each insists the other's timing has no bearing on its own plans.
A confidential S-1 submission allows a company to present its financial disclosures to regulators for review without immediately making those documents available to the general public or prospective investors. Such filings typically precede an actual listing by six to nine months, though the timeline varies considerably.
OpenAI Says the IPO Timing Is Undecided and That Going Public 'May Be a While' Away
In what it conceded it expected to become public anyway, OpenAI published the full text of its announcement on Monday (8 June) without embellishment. "We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it," the company said. "We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company."
The company left the door open to an earlier listing should circumstances warrant. "But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best," it added.
OpenAI's chief financial officer Sarah Friar had told CNBC in April that it was "good hygiene" for a company of OpenAI's size to "look and feel and act" like a public company, though she declined at the time to specify any listing timeline.
OpenAI at $852 Billion and Anthropic at $965 Billion Are Both Expected to List Above $1 Trillion
OpenAI's most recent funding round, completed in March, placed the company's valuation at $852 billion, making it one of the most valuable private enterprises in the world. Anthropic, which closed a funding round in May, is currently valued at $965 billion. Both companies are expected to seek valuations exceeding $1 trillion at the time of their eventual listings, a threshold that would represent approximately ten times the valuation at which Facebook went public in 2012.
OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the filing, the same two banks listed as lead advisers on SpaceX's public offering, whose roadshow began last week.
Sam Altman Says OpenAI Is Not in an IPO Race With Anthropic and Will List When the Timing Makes Sense
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman sought to reframe the narrative around the duelling filings, rejecting the suggestion that the company is competing with Anthropic to reach the public market first.
"I think there is a race to deliver the best technology and build the best business," Altman told CNBC. "But, you know, going public is a financing event, and I don't think that's one that we're focused on the timing of. We'll do it when we think it makes sense."
OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all identified as key competitors in artificial intelligence within SpaceX's own public offering documents.
OpenAI Plans Tender Offer to Allow Employees to Sell Shares at the $852 Billion Valuation
Alongside the IPO announcement, OpenAI is planning a tender offer that would allow employees to liquidate shares at the company's most recent post-money valuation of $852 billion, according to a person familiar with the plans quoted by Business Insider.
The move is intended to relieve some of the near-term pressure for liquidity among staff at a company that has never traded on a public exchange.
Trump Administration in Discussions to Acquire a Stake in OpenAI Ahead of Any Public Listing
Adding a further layer of complexity to the path towards a listing, OpenAI is in active discussions with the Trump administration about the possibility of the government acquiring a stake in the company. The terms and structure of any such arrangement have not been publicly disclosed.
ChatGPT Has More Than 900 Million Weekly Active Users but OpenAI Is Still Burning Substantial Cash
Since its release in 2022, ChatGPT has become one of the most rapidly adopted consumer technology products in history and now supports more than 900 million weekly active users.
Despite that reach, OpenAI has raised more than $180 billion in total funding and continues to consume significant capital as it secures computing infrastructure to train and run its AI models at scale.
A public listing would provide fresh capital and liquidity for employees but would also require OpenAI to publicly disclose its audited revenue and cost figures for the first time and subject the company to the sustained scrutiny that accompanies life as a listed entity.
Altman Describes a 'Third Phase' for OpenAI
In a separate post published on Monday, Altman set out what he characterised as a new chapter in the OpenAI's development. The first phase, he wrote, involved conducting research towards artificial general intelligence. The second was the transition into a product company and understanding how people used its tools.
"Now we are entering the third phase," Altman wrote. “The economy is beginning to reshape around AI. The central 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 sharpening its internal focus in recent months, closing its short-form video application Sora and directing investment towards its enterprise business and its coding assistant Codex, which competes directly with Anthropic's Claude Code. Altman wrote on X in April that "feels like codex is having a chatgpt moment," describing the tool's growing traction.
OpenAI's IPO Filing Comes Days After Its Three-Week Court Battle With Elon Musk Concluded
The confidential filing arrives days after the conclusion of a three-week legal confrontation between Altman and Elon Musk, who first brought suit in 2024 alleging that OpenAI had reneged on its founding commitment to remain a nonprofit organisation.
An advisory jury found that Musk had waited too long to bring those claims, and the federal judge immediately adopted the verdict.
Musk disputed the outcome in a post on X, writing that the judge and jury “never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality.”
