OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file draft IPO paperwork as soon as this week, positioning the artificial intelligence company for what could become one of the largest public market debuts in history.
According to CNBC, OpenAI is working with investment banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on preparations for a confidential filing that could arrive within days or weeks. The company is currently valued at more than $850 billion by private investors.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company regularly evaluates strategic options as part of normal governance practices but did not comment directly on the timing of an IPO.
The filing preparations follow months of internal positioning toward becoming a public company. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar previously said the company has been focused on operating with the structure and discipline expected of a public business, though she declined to discuss a specific timeline.
OpenAI’s public market plans emerge during a period of massive infrastructure spending and escalating competition across the AI industry. The company has reportedly raised more than $180 billion from investors while continuing to spend aggressively on computing infrastructure, model development, enterprise expansion, and AI products.
The IPO could become one of the largest technology offerings ever if OpenAI’s valuation continues climbing toward the trillion-dollar range.
AI Rivalry Moves to Wall Street
The timing also intensifies the growing rivalry between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Musk’s SpaceXAI, formed earlier this year after SpaceX merged with xAI, is also preparing for a major IPO expected to disclose its prospectus imminently. SpaceXAI was reportedly valued at roughly $1.25 trillion in February, potentially placing it above OpenAI in valuation.
The two companies arrive on public markets following a highly public legal battle in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and president Greg Brockman, accusing the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission in favor of commercial profit.
Earlier this week, a jury ruled against Musk, finding he waited too long to bring the lawsuit. The verdict removed a major legal overhang that analysts said could have complicated OpenAI’s IPO preparations.
The conflict has evolved into a broader struggle over leadership in the AI industry, spanning infrastructure, large language models, enterprise software, AI agents, and developer tools.
Investors Push for Sustainable AI Economics
OpenAI’s IPO preparations also come amid growing investor pressure to prove that large-scale AI businesses can eventually deliver sustainable economics despite enormous operating costs.
The company remains at the center of the generative AI boom launched by ChatGPT in 2022, but competition has intensified significantly over the past year. Rivals including Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and SpaceXAI are investing heavily in coding agents, enterprise AI systems, multimodal generation, and infrastructure platforms.
Anthropic has emerged as one of OpenAI’s strongest challengers in enterprise deployments and AI-assisted software development. Reports indicate Anthropic is now discussing a new funding round that could value the company at approximately $900 billion, potentially overtaking OpenAI’s valuation. Anthropic also disclosed earlier this year that it surpassed $30 billion in annualized revenue.
The race between OpenAI and its competitors increasingly centers not only on model performance, but also on infrastructure ownership, enterprise adoption, developer ecosystems, and access to public capital markets. A successful IPO would give OpenAI substantially more financial flexibility as it continues investing in data centers, AI chips, global infrastructure, and new consumer and enterprise products.
