Topline
OpenAI has confidentially filed an S-1 form for an initial public offering, the company said in a brief statement on Monday, about one week after artificial intelligence rival Anthropic did the same as several of the largest companies in the industry prepare to go public.
OpenAI said it has not decided exactly when the IPO would take place.
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Key Facts
In a brief statement released on Monday evening, OpenAI said it expected news of the confidential filing to leak, prompting it to announce the filing early.
The company said it hasn’t decided when the highly anticipated IPO would take place, warning that “it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company.”
The company behind ChatGPT has reportedly been planning to go public for months, and the Wall Street Journal reported in May the company was being advised by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for an imminent filing.
The announcement comes only about one week after Anthropic confidentially filed paperwork to go public, and several weeks after similar moves from SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company that also merged with his AI company xAI in February.
Read OpenAI’s Statement in Full
“We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. 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.”
Big Number
$852 billion. That’s how much OpenAI was last valued at after its most recent fundraising round, the company said in March. The AI firm said it raised about $122 billion from “strategic partners,” including Amazon and SoftBank. Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI employees, recently pulled ahead in funding and was recently valued at over $900 billion after a fundraising round in May.
Key Background
The filing also comes only weeks after Musk lost his high profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. The SpaceX and Tesla billionaire sued the company for transitioning from a nonprofit, where Musk himself once sat on the board, to a for-profit model. A jury in California eventually ruled Musk was too late in bringing the lawsuit, and a judge threw out his suit in May.
What to Watch For
It’s still unclear if OpenAI is profitable at this point in time. The company brought in about $13 billion last year from subscriptions for ChatGPT and other AI tools, the New York TImes reported in January, and expects to triple that revenue in 2026. However, the Wall Street Journal later reported in April OpenAI missed its revenue targets and targets for new users, casting doubt on whether it could keep up with increased competition from competitors like Anthropic and Google while also spending billions more on new data centers.
Further Reading
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/05/20/elon-musks-spacex-files-for-highly-anticipated-ipo/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/05/26/inside-the-murky-market-selling-pre-ipo-spacex-and-openai-shares/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/06/01/anthropic-confidentially-files-for-its-highly-anticipated-ipo/
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