‘There are things we want to do that could be easier as a private company’, says OpenAI.
OpenAI has privately filed to go public, but said it may be “a while” before it ceases to be a private company.
“We haven’t decided on a time yet; it may be time because there are things we want to do that may be easier as an independent company,” said OpenAI in a brief statement yesterday (June 8). “But it’s a complex set of trade-offs and this gives us an opportunity to go public sooner if that ends up being the best.”
Estimates last year suggested that an initial public offering (IPO) could value the maker of ChatGPT at up to $1trn, in one of the largest listings in history. The company, at the time, was expected to raise at least $60bn in the IPO.
Although new reports indicate that the company is also in talks with the US government in the hope that it will buy some of its shares once it has gone public.
The IPO announcement comes just days after fierce rival AI firm Anthropic’s $852bn filing also filed to go public.
Meanwhile, the race for the biggest IPO raise is currently led by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is expected to raise $75 billion in its listing. The parent company iX and xAI filed for an IPO late last month.
Anthropic – currently more valuable than OpenAI at $965bn – has been making inroads into its customer business, with reports earlier this year finding that Claude’s parent was capturing a large portion of the startup’s AI customers through OpenAI.
As a countermeasure, OpenAI is reportedly working on a major overhaul of ChatGPT since its launch in 2022 to better compete with Anthropic, which is holding a smaller focus on its enterprise business.
According to reports, the new desktop ‘superapp’ will focus on OpenAI’s Codex coding tool, a move that reflects the shifting interests from AI chatbots to agents that perform tasks for users. The app will also feature an AI chatbot, and an AI-powered browser Atlas.
OpenAI executives view ChatGPT as an introductory tool to drive adoption of high-value products. The changes are expected to be introduced in the coming weeks.
The company is also making big-name hires to develop the “next generation of personal agents”, while shutting down less profitable businesses like its Sora video production model.
Most of ChatGPT’s 1bn active OpenAI customers use the free version of the tool. The company has between 5m and 9m business users, according to various blogs on its website, while the Financial Times reports that it has 2m businesses under its wing and 5m active Codex users every week.
The company expects revenue from its corporate customers, which represent 40pc of total revenue, to grow to 50pc by the end of the year.
Even so, OpenAI is far from profitable, generating around $13bn in revenue last year with projected usage of around $600bn by 2030.
Sources told CNBC earlier this year that the company plans to top $280bn in revenue by 2030 — about 20 times its 2025 revenue — with roughly equal contributions from its consumers and businesses.
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