OpenAI has submitted a confidential filing for a U.S. initial public offering, the ChatGPT creator announced on Monday. The move aligns OpenAI with its core competitor, Anthropic, as both tech giants prepare to transition to public markets to capitalize on intense investor demand for artificial intelligence equities. While OpenAI refrained from disclosing the specific size, valuation, or timeline of the offering, the company noted that a public debut could take time, stating that certain immediate objectives remain easier to execute under a private corporate structure. According to media reports, the AI heavyweight is targeting a market valuation of up to $1 trillion, with a potential stock market debut arriving as early as September.
A debut at that scale would complete a historic trio of rapid, trillion-dollar-plus tech listings, serving as a definitive litmus test for public market appetite for high-growth tech firms over the last decade. Elon Musk’s SpaceX led this wave by filing for a historic $75 billion offering at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Meanwhile, Anthropic—the creator of the widely adopted Claude Code programming assistant—recently announced its own confidential U.S. IPO filing just weeks after completing a massive $65 billion funding round that valued the startup at $965 billion. Financial analysts note that OpenAI’s filing ensures it keeps its strategic options flexible, especially after Anthropic briefly pulled ahead in the regulatory timeline following its own blockbuster capital raise, defying prediction market traders who largely expected OpenAI to file first.
These high-profile IPO filings signify a milestone era for the global technology ecosystem, cementing artificial intelligence as the dominant investment thesis of the current decade. Earlier this year, OpenAI secured $110 billion in a funding round valuing the company at $840 billion, backed by prominent tech entities including Nvidia, Amazon, and SoftBank. Concurrently, OpenAI revealed that ChatGPT has amassed over 900 million weekly active users and 50 million premium consumer subscribers. The road to the public markets follows a key renegotiation of OpenAI’s structural alliance with Microsoft. While the Windows maker’s cumulative $13 billion investment since 2019 catalyzed OpenAI’s growth and boosted Microsoft’s Azure cloud business, the revised terms have allowed OpenAI to establish fresh commercial partnerships with competing cloud giants like Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.
Financial disclosures from March indicate that OpenAI is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue—a clip that outpaces the early growth trajectories of internet-era giants like Meta and Alphabet—up from a quarterly revenue of $1 billion at the close of 2024. Despite this rapid top-line expansion, sources familiar with the matter indicate that OpenAI informed investors during its latest funding round that it does not project reaching profitability until 2030.
As OpenAI prepares for its listing, the broader AI sector faces a crowded competitive landscape and heightened investor scrutiny regarding the sustainability of its rapid valuation growth. Anthropic has gained substantial traction among software developers utilizing its Claude platform for programming, with enterprises deploying its flagship model, Mythos, to detect software vulnerabilities. Investment bankers caution that while these massive tech offerings will energize the U.S. IPO market, they risk absorbing liquidity that might otherwise sustain smaller corporate listings. Market analysts point out that OpenAI must navigate a crowded capital pipeline, given that SpaceX and Anthropic are further along in the IPO queue, and established tech giants are executing multi-billion-dollar secondary offerings, exemplified by Google’s recently finalized public market raise.
OpenAI’s path to a public listing also marks a significant departure from its origins. Founded in 2015 as a research-focused non-profit, the organization established a for-profit division in 2019 to sustain the immense computing costs required for advanced AI development. This complex governance model, which preserved non-profit control over the commercial subsidiary, led to corporate instability in late 2023 when CEO Sam Altman was briefly deposed before being reinstated following a widespread employee rebellion. To remedy these structural limitations, OpenAI announced an overhaul in December 2024 to transition into a public benefit corporation, a shift aimed at unlocking larger pools of capital and shedding non-profit operational restrictions.
This restructuring sparked intense legal pushback from early co-founder Elon Musk, who filed a lawsuit accusing Altman and other executives of abandoning the company’s foundational humanitarian mission for private profit. However, a U.S. jury ruled unanimously against Musk in May, clearing the AI pioneer of liability and resolving a primary legal hurdle that analysts say could have otherwise derailed or severely complicated the upcoming initial public offering.
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