ChatGPT maker OpenAI has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), the company said on Monday, joining rival Anthropic in a race to the stock market as investors seek exposure to the artificial intelligence boom.
OpenAI did not disclose the size or terms of the offering and said a timeline for the listing 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 in a statement.
Reuters previously reported that the AI giant is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion in a stock market debut that could come as early as September.
At that valuation, OpenAI would pave the way for a trio of trillion-dollar companies to debut in quick succession, in what is widely seen as the most significant test of investor appetite for high-growth technology stocks in a decade.
Elon Musk's SpaceX was the first to move, filing for an IPO that would rank as the largest in history if completed. The company is pursuing a $75 billion offering at a $1.75 trillion valuation.
Anthropic, the company behind the popular coding assistant Claude Code, said on 1 June that it had confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, weeks after raising $65 billion in a funding round that valued it at $965 billion.
"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.
The IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI would crystallise a transformative period for the technology industry and global markets, with artificial intelligence rapidly emerging as the defining investment theme of the decade.
OpenAI said earlier this year that it was raising $110 billion at an $840 billion valuation from a roster of heavyweight backers including SoftBank, Amazon and Nvidia.
At the time, it also disclosed that ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million consumer subscribers.
Microsoft's early investment, totalling $13 billion since 2019, helped pave the way for OpenAI's rapid rise and fuelled growth in Microsoft's Azure cloud computing business.
In March, OpenAI said it was generating $2 billion in monthly revenue and growing roughly four times faster than companies that defined the internet and mobile eras, including Alphabet and Meta. That compares with about $1 billion in quarterly revenue at the end of 2024.
OpenAI told investors during its most recent fundraising round that it did not expect to become profitable until 2030, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Yet the industry OpenAI helped create has quickly become crowded, and investors are increasingly scrutinising whether the sector's meteoric rise can be sustained.
Anthropic has emerged as one of its biggest rivals, with soaring demand for Claude among software developers seeking coding assistance. Some companies are also deploying its flagship Mythos model to identify vulnerabilities in their software.
While the blockbuster offerings could inject fresh momentum into the U.S. IPO market, some bankers warn they could also absorb capital that might otherwise flow into smaller deals.
"What OpenAI does not want is for the public market capital to exhaust itself," said Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson.
"Not only are SpaceX and Anthropic ahead of it in line to IPO, large public competitors could also raise tens of billions of dollars each in public market secondary issuances, as Google just completed last week."
Musk-led SpaceX is expected to go public this week.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a research-focused non-profit organisation, but created a for-profit arm four years later to help fund the soaring costs of developing artificial intelligence systems.
Its unusual structure, which gave the non-profit control over the for-profit entity, came under intense scrutiny in late 2023 when chief executive Sam Altman was briefly ousted before returning days later after employees revolted.
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