OpenAI CEO Tells Staff to Expect IPO ‘Within the Next Year’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly told employees he expects the company to go public “within the next year.”

That message from Sam Altman to his staff added that “many things could cause it to be sooner or later in that range, but filing now gives us optionality if we want to go sooner,” The Information reported Wednesday (June 10), citing an internal Slack message.

The report added that another OpenAI executive also teased the launch of a new AI model the artificial intelligence startup is preparing.

Reached by PYMNTS, an OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

As the report notes, Altman’s message came at roughly the same time OpenAI announced on its blog that it had filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The Information says the cautious tone of Altman’s message is in contrast with a growing view among investors that OpenAI and rival Anthropic are racing to go public as quickly as possible at valuations of around $1 trillion.

According to the report, Altman’s message said that if OpenAI’s tech advances rapidly to the point where the AI can create new AI — what is known as recursive self-improvement (RSI) — a quicker stock market listing would become less likely.

“The faster the potential RSI takeoff looks like it could be, the more it could be advantageous to delay an IPO,” because the “technology and the world may change in surprising ways, and there might be good reasons to be a private company during that time,” the CEO said.

But he added that the level of funding OpenAI needs for its compute and infrastructure buildout could speed up the IPO plans. In announcing its plans earlier this week, OpenAI said it was publicizing the confidential filing because it expected the news to leak.

“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,” OpenAI said in the announcement.

“But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

Also Monday, PYMNTS wrote about the company’ plans for a major overhaul of ChatGPT, bringing together AI agents, coding tools and third-party services into one platform.

The stakes here are “strategic as well as financial,” the report said, as OpenAI is forecast to lose $14 billion this year, even as it brings in $20 billion in annualized revenue and 900 million weekly users — just 5.5% of whom are paying customers.