OpenAI has joined the circus of private AI companies with confirmed plans to go public.
On Monday, the ChatGPT creator announced it had filed a confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC). The document is the first step toward pursuing an IPO and stock listing. It follows in the footsteps of competitors like Anthropic and Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX, which has made AI ambitions a core focus of its prospectus.
Filing confidentially allows OpenAI to provide financials and other sensitive information to the SEC before it becomes public to potential investors. Despite the secrecy, OpenAI shared the decision publicly as “we expect it to leak,” it said in a statement.
While it has put the wheels in motion, OpenAI doesn’t seem to be in any rush to become public.
“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 stated in its announcement. “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 is targeting up to a $1 trillion valuation through the IPO (which likely won’t come until at least September), according to a Reuters report, based on people familiar with the matter. However, the company has yet to disclose a listing date or targeted share price.
A slew of AI companies are planning IPOs
OpenAI helped usher in a new wave of AI advancement when it launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022. While it’s still one of the biggest names in its field, its rival Anthropic has taken the lead this year with its LLM Claude. Anthropic is currently valued at $965 billion, while OpenAI has a valuation of $852 billion.
Now, OpenAI is again trailing Anthropic, sharing its SEC filing news exactly one week after Anthropic made its own announcement.
Anthropic’s IPO date is also up in the air, with the company simply stating it will have the “option to go public after the SEC completes its review.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX is set to go public this Friday, June 12—likely becoming the first trillion dollar IPO in history. The space company is valued at $1.25 trillion after merging with xAI this past February. It reportedly aims to raise up to $75 billion during its IPO.