OpenAI files to go public as IPO race heats up

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OpenAI has confidentially filed paperwork to go public, the company announced Monday.

It is one of three leading AI companies preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), alongside SpaceX and Anthropic, which have both filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in recent months.

The company said in a post on X it “recently submitted” the filing, but did not give specific details on the exact day. Reports earlier this year indicated it could happen as soon as this fall.

“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 wrote in its announcement on X Monday. “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 was most recently valued at $852 billion.

The ChatGPT maker said it chose to share the confidential filing as it “expect[ed] it to leak.”

It comes a week after Anthropic confidentiality filed with the SEC, with the company’s latest funding round, during which the company was valued slightly higher than OpenAI at close to $1 trillion.

The AI firms are hoping to tap into public markets for additional funding given the massive amounts of computing power required for AI development.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which acquired xAI earlier this year, already filed for an IPO and is reportedly aiming for a June listing with a record-breaking $1.75 trillion valuation. The company plans to list its shares at $135 to raise $75 billion, which would be the largest IPO ever.

As the three AI companies face off, it is shining a spotlight on the tensions between the titans atop each of the firms, most notably Musk and OpenAI CEO Altman.

OpenAI’s corporate structure has been a key point of contention in recent years. The company was founded in 2015 by Altman, Musk and others. In 2019, it added a for-public arm, which was later converted into a public benefit corporation last year, remaining under the control of the nonprofit.

Musk, who left the firm in 2018, recently lost a high-profile court case against OpenAI and Altman that was related to the change in corporate structure. A nine-person jury determined Musk took too long to file the suit, missing the deadline for the three-year statute of limitations.

The verdict was a victory for OpenAI, which did not have to adjust its leadership or corporate structure as Musk wanted.

This story was updated at 6:07 p.m.

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