SAN FRANCISCO — Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI has surpassed $25 billion in annualized revenue and is reportedly taking early steps toward a public listing, potentially as soon as late 2026, in what financial analysts are calling “the most anticipated IPO since the last time someone promised to change the world and needed money to do it.”
The company, which began in 2015 as a non-profit dedicated to ensuring AI benefited all of humanity, has since pivoted to a capped-profit structure, then a for-profit model, and is now preparing to let institutional investors own pieces of it on a major stock exchange — a journey that one venture capitalist described as “basically the origin story of every company that ever existed, but with better PR.”
“We are focused on our mission,” said an OpenAI spokesperson, adding that the mission is “broadly to make AI safe, useful, and profitable, roughly in that order.” “The IPO will allow us to continue building transformative technology while also giving early employees the liquidity event they absolutely deserve after four years of free catered lunches.”
OpenAI’s flagship model, ChatGPT, currently serves over 500 million weekly users — a figure the company notes is larger than the population of the European Union, though the EU has not yet filed a regulatory complaint about the latest model specifically, which sources say is “just a matter of time.”
The prospectus, which has not yet been officially filed but has been “definitely leaked by someone who definitely didn’t mean to,” reportedly lists among its key risk factors: geopolitical uncertainty, chip shortages, regulatory scrutiny, and “the possibility that one of our models might at some point say something that is technically true but extremely inconvenient.”
“I think this is a wonderful investment opportunity,” said one Wall Street analyst who had just been briefed on the company by a ChatGPT-powered financial assistant. “Strong fundamentals, clear market position, and absolutely no conflicts of interest in this analysis whatsoever.”
The IPO news comes as OpenAI also announced it would spend more than $20 billion over three years on server capacity, in a deal that gives it warrants for a minority stake in the chip company it is paying — a financial arrangement that analysts described as “circular,” “innovative,” and “something a normal person would need to lie down after thinking about.”
Competitors in the AI space, including Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI, have all declined to comment on OpenAI’s IPO plans, though sources close to the matter confirm that all four companies are “watching closely,” which in Silicon Valley means refreshing Bloomberg every four minutes.
At press time, OpenAI’s valuation was estimated at somewhere between $300 billion and “whatever number sounds most impressive at a dinner party,” with early investors reportedly debating which Hamptons property to designate as their primary residence going forward.
The company confirmed that its AI safety team has been informed of the IPO and issued a statement describing the news as “fine.”
Globe News Daily notes that this article was not written by a ChatGPT model, though we did ask one to proofread the headline and it suggested we be “more balanced.” We declined, and it said “I understand.” We found that slightly ominous.
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