OpenAI files confidentially for IPO, emulating Anthropic

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, as announced in a blog post on Monday. The filing comes just over a week after its main rival Anthropic also filed to go public, intensifying the competition between the two AI firms.

OpenAI, last valued at $852 billion post-money, has submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO. The company has not disclosed any specifics yet, but said it published the blog post because it anticipated a leak.

“We have not decided on timing yet; it may be some time because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” the company wrote. “But it’s a complex set of trade-offs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being the best path.”

Around the same time, in a separate blog post, OpenAI published a broad philosophical statement about its mission, its vision for AGI, and its belief that AI should benefit all of humanity — the kind of forward-looking communication that companies entering a quiet period have historically been careful to avoid. That OpenAI appears comfortable publishing it so close to a confidential filing says something — not necessarily about its own legal judgment but about the regulatory environment in which it operates. The SEC under the Trump administration has taken a notably more hands-off approach toward tech and AI companies than previous administrations, and OpenAI may simply be reading the room.

Regardless of the regulatory questions, the filing is the latest sign that 2026 will be a blockbuster year for public markets. SpaceX is also expected to debut at a $1.75 trillion valuation, meaning three of the most closely watched tech companies could all go public within months of each other — a concentration of high-stakes offerings not seen since the dot-com boom.

OpenAI is racing toward an IPO even as it recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. Its chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, has reportedly expressed concerns that OpenAI may not be able to sustain its massive data center spending. And the burn rate does appear to be enormous.

In late March, OpenAI secured $122 billion in the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history — $3 billion of which came directly from retail investors through bank channels. But the firm expects to spend roughly that same amount on computing power for AI research alone in 2028, and projects burning $85 billion that year even after doubling sales from the previous year, according to The Wall Street Journal. In other words, OpenAI is asking public market investors to buy into a business that, by its own projections, will not generate more cash than it spends for at least four more years.

SpaceX offers a parallel example. Its AI spending, while not as large, illustrates how the cost of training large language models can exceed the revenue those models generate — a structural challenge the entire industry is grappling with, and one that public market investors will have to price.

Anthropic, on the other hand, has presented investors with a much rosier picture of its financials, saying it is close to achieving its first quarterly profit. Even so, with a recent $65 billion funding round and another $36 billion in chip-allocated debt potentially on the way, Anthropic’s burn rate is far from modest.

The confidential IPO filing allows OpenAI to begin preparations for a public offering without publicly disclosing detailed financial information or business risks, which is why the company has not yet shared stock pricing or how much it hopes to raise. That said, secondary markets offer a glimpse into what investors are willing to pay.

Anthropic recently surged to a $1 trillion valuation on Forge Global, a retail secondary market platform, surpassing OpenAI, which was valued at around $880 billion in April.

David Shapiro, founder and CEO of OpenVC and overseer of the NYSE OpenVC 500 Index — which tracks the largest public and private companies in the U.S. — said Anthropic’s rate of appreciation far exceeds OpenAI’s this year: 123% year-to-date versus 11.3% for OpenAI. That said, despite Anthropic’s clear boost, OpenAI is not seeing a lack of secondary interest.

“From a secondary investor perspective, OpenAI had already grown into a significant portion of its valuation,” Shapiro told TechCrunch. “We haven’t seen OpenAI crater or anything close, and the valuation remains enormously successful, according to the index.”

He added that OpenAI’s stock in the secondary market “experienced a slight pop over the last few days, suggesting investors may be pricing both as the ‘dual winners’ of the broader LLM race.”

But the race to reach the public markets first is a real concern. Experts say whoever debuts first will likely capture more of the increasingly scarce capital for AI companies — much of which may have already been absorbed by SpaceX, which is expected to IPO first among the three.

Additionally, Anthropic’s filing disclosures will set a valuation comparison that constrains how OpenAI can price its own offering when it files, according to a recent PitchBook report that characterized OpenAI as overvalued relative to its fundamentals. In other words, if Anthropic prices conservatively, OpenAI’s path to its target valuation becomes more difficult.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab and disrupted the AI world when it released ChatGPT in 2022, sparking a wave of large language model advancements across the industry.

While OpenAI has expanded its products to serve enterprise and government customers, the firm has a strong reputation for being more consumer-focused than rival Anthropic. The company has achieved significant scale, with around 900 million weekly active users.

The IPO comes after significant internal struggles within the company. In 2022, OpenAI’s board ousted Sam Altman over what it described as a lack of transparency from Altman and concerns about whether he was committed to the firm’s mission of benefiting all humanity. Altman was quickly reinstated, and the board members involved in the coup, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, left shortly after. The episode raised governance questions that have never been fully resolved and that prospective public investors will likely scrutinize closely.

More recently, OpenAI has faced several lawsuits, including one from the state of Florida accusing the company and Altman of harming children by providing information to school shooters, offering guidance on self-harm, and fostering addiction among young users. Florida’s complaint adds to the growing list of lawsuits against OpenAI and other chatbot makers following incidents involving user delusions, self-harm, suicide, and mass casualty events.

Last month, OpenAI prevailed at trial after co-founder and rival Elon Musk sued the company and Altman over an alleged promise to keep the company a nonprofit. The case was ultimately dismissed after both a jury and judge found that Musk had waited too long to file — he was beyond the statute of limitations when he filed the case in 2024.

OpenAI has also faced criticism after its president, Greg Brockman, and his wife each donated $12.5 million to Leading the Future, a pro-AI political action committee dedicated to opposing local politicians who advocate for AI regulation. Both also made similar contributions to MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC. OpenAI has tried to distance itself from what it calls Brockman’s personal donations, saying the funds were not provided on behalf of the company.