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OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence company behind ChatGPT, announced it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO), setting up the firm to raise fresh funds as it competes with deep-pocketed tech giants in the fast-growing AI industry.
In a Monday evening post on X, OpenAI said it had not determined when the company would begin listing on public markets.
“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. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best,” the company said.
The move would subject the privately held company to new scrutiny from public investors and regulators, as well as ongoing financial reporting requirements. OpenAI valued itself at $852 billion after a round of funding in March.
The announcement comes weeks after a federal court dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI brought by co-founder Elon Musk, who accused the company of abandoning its public-benefit mission as it moved toward a for-profit structure.
A jury found that Musk waited too long to bring the claims, barring the lawsuit due to the statute of limitations. OpenAI rebuked the charges, calling them “baseless.”
Last month, Musk-led rocket and satellite company SpaceX filed publicly for its IPO. That firm oversees xAI, which operates the chatbot Grok. Anthropic, another AI competitor, announced it had filed for an IPO on June 1.
ChatGPT set a record for the fastest-growing app user base after its release in 2022. It reached 100 million users within two months. The company has issued a series of updates to its signature product, including a personal finance component as recently as last month.
As of February, the app’s user base had ballooned to 900 million weekly active users, OpenAI said.
Still, the company expects to lose $14 billion in 2026 as it spends on energy and chips necessary for the technology, among other costs, The Information reported in January.
In this Nov. 16, 2023, file photo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, FILE
Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman voiced mixed feelings about a potential IPO.
“Am I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways, I am, and in some ways I think it’d be really annoying,” Altman told the Big Technology Podcast.
Altman appeared to balk at the shift in his role at the company. “Am I excited to be a public company CEO? 0%,” Altman said, but he noted the opportunity to raise additional funds.
“I do think it’s cool that public markets get to participate in value creation,” Altman added.
In 2023, OpenAI fired Altman, removing him from his role as CEO. After an employee revolt and a public apology from one of the company’s board members, Altman was rehired for the position just four days later.
The decision included a condition for OpenAI to reconfigure its board of directors.
The stock market and the wider economy have come to increasingly rely on massive spending on AI to propel continued growth, even as firms warn of job losses tied to the technology.
A wave of thousands of job cuts attributed to AI over recent months has taken hold in industries as diverse as tech and airlines. Economists disagree about the extent to which AI is to blame for recent job cuts, including some analysts who say the technology has had little impact.
In April, Anthropic opted against releasing its latest model, Mythos, expressing concern that the tool could be used to bypass cybersecurity protections across the internet.
