OpenAI plans September IPO with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
OpenAI is preparing to file a confidential IPO prospectus within days, targeting a September 2026 stock market debut, according to The New York Times. The company is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and is monitoring market conditions before pulling the trigger. With a current private valuation of $852 billion, analysts expect the listing could push OpenAI past a $1 trillion market cap.
The race to list
Speed matters here. Rival Anthropic is targeting an October listing, and SpaceX has a June 12 IPO target at a $1.75 trillion valuation. CNBC (May 20) reports that prediction market Kalshi now gives OpenAI 83% odds of beating Anthropic to public markets — up from 32% before the filing news broke. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives summed it up: "Getting to public markets first is very important."
OpenAI has not officially confirmed IPO preparations. A company spokesperson said it "regularly evaluates various strategic options" while keeping its focus on product development. Investors include Microsoft and NVIDIA.
One legal cloud has cleared. On May 18, a federal jury unanimously dismissed Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, which challenged the company's conversion from nonprofit to for-profit structure. The case was thrown out on statute-of-limitations grounds — the jury found Musk had waited beyond the three-year window to sue. The underlying "charity looting" argument, however, was never ruled on, and that framing will likely resurface as reporters dig into the IPO prospectus.
The numbers that matter
The financials are striking in both directions. OpenAI posted $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024, but recorded a $5 billion loss that year. Losses are projected to widen sharply: CMC Markets (May 21) puts the 2026 loss at $14 billion, with a $207 billion funding gap forecast through 2030. Profitability is not expected until 2030 at the earliest.
CEO Sam Altman has separately outlined plans to invest up to $600 billion in computing infrastructure by 2030 — a bet that scale will eventually convert into sustainable margins.
What to watch
There are internal tensions too. Reports indicate Altman is pushing an aggressive timeline while CFO Sarah Friar is urging caution, a disagreement that signals execution risk heading into the roadshow. For everyday ChatGPT users, an IPO won't change the product — but it will force far greater transparency on pricing, Microsoft partnership terms, and data practices than OpenAI has ever had to provide before.
