OpenAI has filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering, the company announced on Monday, kicking off what could be a months-long process toward debuting on a US stock exchange. The move makes it the third company to file for what could be a trillion-dollar IPO this year. Tech companies pursuing the most powerful AI models, including publicly traded giants Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, are hungry for tens of billions of dollars each to build out more data centers and recruit scientists to grow their services.
OpenAI did not specify timing for the IPO nor how much it plans to raise. "We recently submitted a confidential S-1," the company said in an unsigned, one-paragraph blog post. "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." OpenAI declined to comment further. But by having paperwork ready, the company could draft off a potentially successful debut by Anthropic. If the rival runs into any challenges, OpenAI could hold off and recalibrate.
OpenAI’s revenue from subscriptions, ads, and service fees grew to somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion last year, according to previous company disclosures. But it spent far more money on cloud computing and thousands of staff, leading to billions of dollars in losses. In recent months, the company has carried out several restructurings due to executive illnesses and an attempt to focus on fewer projects. OpenAI executives have debated for months whether the company is prepared to go public, according to two people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss confidential information.
Source: wired
