OpenAI has taken the first concrete, public steps toward a stock market listing — confirming the company has crossed US$25 billion in annualised revenue and is advancing preparatory work that could support a public offering as soon as late 2026.
The move, reported through multiple sources and briefly acknowledged by CEO Sam Altman at a closed investor session, would be the largest technology IPO in history and a structural milestone for the AI industry.
What Has Actually Been Filed
OpenAI has NOT submitted a formal S-1 with the SEC. What has been done:
- Engaged Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in advisory roles
- Completed the conversion from the capped-profit LP model to a Delaware public-benefit corporation — closing a structural obstacle to a listing
- Begun audit-standard-grade financial consolidation across all OpenAI entities
- Briefed the Microsoft partnership leadership, whose consent rights are a governance variable
- Commissioned internal modelling of valuation scenarios ranging US$1.0T to US$1.5T
Revenue Picture
Public reporting and leaked numbers suggest the following mix:
- ChatGPT consumer subscriptions contribute the majority — 15 million + paid subscribers globally
- API and enterprise contracts are the fastest-growing segment
- Licensing and partnership revenue from Microsoft sits behind the 49/51 Microsoft–OpenAI economic split
Revenue briefly dipped from a US$25 billion ARR to a US$24 billion ARR earlier this quarter before rebounding back above US$25 billion — a wobble analysts attribute to the Anthropic coding market share push.
Why Now
Three things have aligned:
- The legal conversion to a public-benefit corporation removes the single largest governance blocker
- Capital intensity — OpenAI’s Stargate data-centre programme requires capex at a scale only public markets can cleanly underwrite
- The competitive dynamic — Anthropic’s US$30 billion ARR and Google’s Gemini push have crystallised the case for a liquid market of OpenAI stock
What Could Slow It Down
The drama around Altman earlier this year — including the board reshuffle and safety-team resignations — has not fully faded. Institutional investors will ask hard questions about governance, and the SEC comment process is not a formality at this scale. A listing is not guaranteed in 2026; a Q1 2027 window is the more realistic base case if any single approval step stretches.
Market Implications
An OpenAI IPO would reprice the entire AI cohort. Private-market comparables — Anthropic at US$400bn, xAI at US$250bn (post SpaceX acquisition) — would mark to a public benchmark for the first time. Expect a surge in AI-adjacent listings in the months following, including cloud infrastructure, inference silicon, and AI-native SaaS plays.
Source: Bloomberg / Fortune / The Information
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