Key Takeaways:
OpenAI plans to go public in 2027 or sooner, CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands meeting, confirming the company has confidentially filed with the SEC and could make that filing public within weeks.
"The IPO is not a finish line. It is a milestone; call it another fundraise," Friar told staff, according to CNBC's Kate Rooney. Friar, who previously served as CFO of Nextdoor and Square, said the company "will be a public company in 2027" and could move sooner "if the business continues to inflect."
OpenAI's order-to-date revenue run rate is up 35 percent, with enterprise growing 50 percent, Friar disclosed. The company's annualized revenue run rate passed $40 billion in July, and its Codex coding product reached 20 million weekly active users. Q2 revenue was $6.7 billion, up 18 percent quarter over quarter, while operating losses widened to $12.3 billion from $9.3 billion in Q1, driven by data center and computing costs.
The listing would be among the largest in tech history. OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at a valuation of $852 billion, and reports suggest it is targeting a $1 trillion valuation at listing. Rival Anthropic, which filed its own confidential prospectus in June, could list as early as September — meaning whichever company lists first will set the valuation benchmark for a new asset class of AI companies.
Friar told employees "we are running our own race" when asked about Anthropic's IPO timeline. But the sequencing carries real consequences. Anthropic posted $11.5 billion in Q2 revenue, a 14-times jump from a year earlier, surpassing OpenAI's $6.7 billion quarterly figure. If Anthropic lists first and prices well, it lifts the comparable for OpenAI. If it breaks, the market's willingness to accept AI-scale losses against AI-scale revenue gets tested in public for the first time.
The last time two closely matched technology rivals raced to list was in 2019, when Uber and Lyft went public within weeks of each other. Uber's debut priced at $45 per share, below its expected range, and both stocks traded below their IPO prices within months as investors questioned profitability. The parallel is not exact — OpenAI and Anthropic operate in a capital-intensive frontier where losses are structural rather than competitive — but the lesson about first-mover pricing pressure applies.
OpenAI could not go public in its original nonprofit form. The company restructured in October 2025, creating OpenAI Group PBC as the for-profit entity. The nonprofit, now called the OpenAI Foundation, holds a 26 percent stake, Microsoft holds roughly 27 percent, and current and former employees and investors hold the remaining 47 percent. The restructuring removed an earlier cap on investor returns and converted employee stakes into standard stock.
The timing of Friar's message also follows the departure of three senior executives in one week, and a Wall Street Journal report that described Q2 numbers as tepid. Friar's disclosure of fresh revenue figures appeared aimed at countering that narrative, CNBC reported. The meeting also served a practical purpose: a public listing gives employees with equity compensation a path to convert shares into cash, a concern that sharpens after leadership turnover.
For investors, the path forward is clear: watch for the confidential filing to go public, which could happen within weeks. The S-1 will reveal the full financial picture, including the mix between consumer and enterprise revenue — a distinction that determines whether OpenAI prices like an infrastructure business or a consumer product. Enterprise contracts renew and expand seat-by-seat, producing the recurring revenue that public markets pay a durable multiple for, while consumer subscriptions are easier to churn out of. A successful listing could lift sentiment across AI infrastructure providers and cloud companies that supply the compute layer. Until then, the 2027 window remains a target rather than a commitment.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
