OpenAI has taken its first formal step towards a stock market listing, filing confidentially for an initial public offering just months after securing one of the largest private fundraising rounds in corporate history.
The ChatGPT developer said it had submitted draft registration documents to the US Securities and Exchange Commission but stressed that no decision had been taken on the timing of a flotation.
"We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it," the company said. "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."
Reports suggested that management and advisers including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are targeting an IPO in the fall.
The move follows a $122 billion fundraising in March that valued OpenAI at roughly $865 billion, up from $500 billion previously. The company said at the time that it was generating around $2 billion in monthly revenue, equivalent to an annual run rate of $24 billion.
The filing comes just a week after rival Anthropic began its own IPO process at a projected higher valuation just shy of $1 trillion, highlighting intensifying competition between the two AI groups.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, said: "Just when the supersized tech rally was looking a little tired, along comes the news of OpenAI's decision to IPO. Presumably the move has been spurred along by Anthropic's recent move towards a public listing, but and now markets face the test of yet another superheavyweight firm listing to test demand for these highly-valued companies that promise to reshape not just the investing landscape, but the entirety of human society.
"The parallels with the early 2010s when the previous wave of loss-making tech costs are clear, but this time the stakes are much higher and the risks much greater."
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said investors would be watching OpenAI's ambitions to become a "product company".
She said this is "interesting for investors, since it would be a major potential source of future revenue. Although it is early days, if OpenAI launches its own product range, it could become a major competitor to Apple and Google, and their share prices are worth watching closely on Tuesday."
The flotation would give outside investors their first detailed look at OpenAI's revenues, margins and cash burn as the company races to build the infrastructure needed to power increasingly sophisticated AI models.
