OpenAI announced Monday afternoon that it has filed to sell its shares on the public market, just one week after its biggest rival, Anthropic, did the same.
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“We recently filed a confidential S-1,” the ChatGPT maker said in a post on X, referring to the official name of the initial public offering filing. “We haven’t decided on the timing yet. There are some things that we think are easier to do as a private company, so it may take a while.”
The artificial intelligence startup added: “This is a complex series of trade-offs, which ultimately gives us the option to go public sooner if that is in our best interest.”
In March, OpenAI raised $122 billion in new cash to fuel its growing ambitions in the AI space, sending its valuation soaring to $852 billion. That cash will be used to develop advanced AI models, as well as the extensive physical data center infrastructure and cloud computing power needed to run those systems.
On June 1, Anthropic also filed to go public. The startup’s latest funding round was valued at $952 billion.
Regardless of when OpenAI and Anthropic decide to start trading this year, they will be the second and third mega-IPOs after SpaceX’s $1 trillion initial public offering scheduled for Friday. Elon Musk’s rocket company is also deeply involved in artificial intelligence through its xAI business.
OpenAI has become well known thanks to ChatGPT. The app, which connects users to the company’s AI models for free, was released in late 2022 and has since garnered hundreds of millions of downloads.
However, OpenAI has faced criticism in recent years. Just last month, the company emerged from a legal battle with Mr. Musk, who filed a lawsuit seeking to break away from its status as a nonprofit organization.
OpenAI also faces numerous claims that ChatGPT is responsible for harm to some young users. The company denied this and said it was not responsible for a recent lawsuit.
At the same time, executives acknowledged that the company needs to reduce the number of “side quests” and “seize the moment.”
The company is reportedly failing to meet “multiple internal revenue and user goals” as a result of intense competition from Anthropic and Google, whose Gemini AI model is growing in popularity.
Similar to Mr. Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar recently said the company plans to reserve some of its eventual offering for average individual traders and investors because “AI needs to be trusted in everything we do.”
“Everyone wants to own a piece of a rocket company. I want everyone to own a piece of ChatGPT,” Fryer told CNBC. “For consumer brands, this is helpful.”
