OpenAI Files for IPO After SpaceX and Anthropic

OpenAI on June 9 said it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), taking the first formal step towards a potential initial public offering.

“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,” the company wrote in a post on X. 

The announcement was made under Rule 135 of the Securities Act of 1933 and does not constitute an offer to sell securities.

OpenAI said the decision involves a complex set of trade-offs and that the filing provides flexibility to pursue a public listing sooner if it determines that is the best course of action.

OpenAI’s move also arrives as investors prepare for a wave of  AI companies’ listings. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already filed publicly and is expected to pursue one of the largest IPOs in market history, targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion and seeking to raise about $75 billion, according to Reuters.

OpenAI rival Anthropic also confidentially submitted its own draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC on June 1. The company recently raised $65 billion in fresh capital at a post-money valuation of $965 billion, overtaking OpenAI’s last reported valuation of $852 billion.

While OpenAI has not disclosed financial details, a confidential S-1 filing allows companies to begin the IPO process without immediately releasing revenue, profitability and governance information to the public. Those details typically become available closer to a public listing.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is preparing a major overhaul of its flagship product, ChatGPT. The company is reportedly working on its largest redesign since the chatbot’s launch, planning to transform ChatGPT into a superapp that combines coding tools, AI agents, and third-party services in a single interface, the Financial Times reported.

The move is intended to expand user engagement and create new revenue opportunities as competition intensifies across the AI industry.

With around 900 million weekly active users, ChatGPT has become one of the most widely used AI products globally.

In its latest blog post, OpenAI said it has entered the third phase of evolution, where AI is reshaping the economy.

Among its priorities, the company said it aims to build an automated AI researcher capable of accelerating the research process itself. “Our internal belief is that by March of 2028, we may have a significant fraction of our research being done by AI systems in tandem with our own researchers,” it said. 

OpenAI also said the industry is moving beyond a focus on frontier AI models toward broader deployment and accessibility. “The central question now is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and easy enough for every person and organisation to benefit from it,” the company said. “Frontier capability is only part of the job.”

It argued that access to AI should be broadly distributed rather than concentrated among a small number of institutions. “A good AI future cannot be one where a small number of institutions control most of the capability and most of the upside,” OpenAI said. “It should be a future where many people, companies, communities, and countries can build, benefit, and hold power.”