CALIFORNIA: The AI gold rush is heading to Wall Street. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has confidentially filed for a US initial public offering, joining rival Anthropic in a push toward public markets as investors scramble for exposure to the artificial intelligence boom.
OpenAI disclosed no size or terms for the offering and said a timeline has not yet been determined. “It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” the company said. Reuters has reported that OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, with a market debut potentially as early as September.
The filing puts OpenAI a step behind Anthropic, the company behind coding assistant Claude Code, which said on June 1 it had confidentially filed for a US IPO weeks after raising $65 billion in a funding round that valued it at $965 billion. On prediction markets, most traders had expected OpenAI to file before Anthropic. “OpenAI is keeping options open as Anthropic edged ahead with its filing after a monster funding round,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, a partner at Cerity Partners.
If OpenAI hits its $1 trillion target, it would join a remarkable cluster of trillion-dollar debuts. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already filed for what would be the largest IPO in history, pursuing a $75 billion offering at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Together, the three listings represent the most consequential test of investor appetite for high-growth technology stocks in a decade.
OpenAI’s financial firepower is not in question. Earlier this year the company said it was raising $110 billion at an $840 billion valuation from a roster of backers including SoftBank, Amazon and Nvidia. At the time it also disclosed that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million consumer subscribers.
Three companies. Nearly $3 trillion in combined targeted valuation. And the AI era has barely begun.
