OpenAI files confidential SEC paperwork for IPO, opening the door to a
Wall Street debut
[June 09, 2026] By
MATT O'BRIEN
ChatGPT maker OpenAI filed preliminary paperwork that would open the
door to it becoming a publicly traded company, the third in a powerhouse
trio of artificial intelligence companies racing to Wall Street debuts.
The San Francisco-based company said Monday it has filed confidential
paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it,” the company said in
a statement. “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while
because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a
private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives
us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
OpenAI's move follows its rival Anthropic's June 1 disclosure that it is
also moving toward an initial public offering of shares. Both are now
following Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, which has started an IPO
roadshow pitching itself as an AI-focused space company.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first publicly floated the possibility of an IPO
last fall, describing it as the “most likely path” for the company given
its size and the need for vast amounts of capital to advance its
technology.
OpenAI began in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the
common good and is now a company valued at $852 billion.
The filing comes at a “precarious moment” for OpenAI as it appears to be
losing ChatGPT’s strong early leads with consumers and businesses to
Google and Anthropic, said Emarketer analyst Nate Elliott.
“But OpenAI doesn’t have a lot of other places to look for the enormous
capital required to support its costs,” Elliott said.
Paving the way for going public was OpenAI’s decision last year to
reorganize its business structure and convert itself into a public
benefit corporation even as it remains technically under the control of
a nonprofit.
OpenAI cleared another obstacle last month with its victory against Musk
in a federal jury trial. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, had
sued the company seeking to oust Altman from its leadership and unravel
its conversion to a for-profit business. A judge dismissed the case
after the jury found Musk filed his lawsuit too late.
OpenAI has not yet publicly disclosed how much money it is making or
when it plans to turn a profit. Much like Anthropic and SpaceX, the
company has been losing more money than it makes because of the huge
costs of building out the venture. OpenAI faces fierce competition from
Anthropic, maker of the increasingly popular chatbot Claude, and
Google's AI assistant Gemini.
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Sam Altman arrives at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif.,
April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, file)
 In an April interview, OpenAI’s
chief financial officer Sarah Friar declined to give a timeline for
a potential IPO but said the company was already “acting with the
good hygiene of a public company,” such as by measuring its revenue
in the way a publicly traded firm would have to report earnings to
the SEC.
“I want us to be ready,” she told The Associated Press. “I think
it’s good to be able to tap the public markets. They’re much bigger
than the private markets."
She said OpenAI’s current valuation would make it one of the 15
biggest companies in the S&P 500.
She also said there is a “credentializing moment of being a public
company.”
“At that point, people are checking your balance sheet, the SEC is
governing you and so on,” she said.
In a separate statement Monday published around the same time as the
announcement of the confidential filing, Altman outlined a broad
vision for OpenAI including three big goals: building an automated
AI researcher, accelerating economic growth and giving “everyone on
Earth a personal AGI,” which stands for artificial general
intelligence or a form of AI that surpasses humans at many tasks.
Altman said OpenAI started out in AI research and moved into
commercial product development but is now moving into its third
phase involving a “broad distribution of power” as the economy
reshapes around AI technology.
He said OpenAI is “working to ensure the gains are widely shared.
Everyone should have an opportunity for a meaningful share in the
prosperity AI creates.”
The remarks follow Altman’s visit last week with Sen. Bernie
Sanders, who is pushing a plan for the public to take a 50%
ownership stake in AI companies such as OpenAI, as well as comments
from President Donald Trump embracing giving the public a stake in
AI’s growth.
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AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this report.
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