OpenAI has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, the company announced Monday, joining its rival Anthropic in a race to Wall Street as AI moves from private markets to public scrutiny.
In a post on X, OpenAI said it had submitted a confidential S-1 filing with the SEC.
“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 wrote on X.
The ChatGPT maker’s filing comes just one week after Anthropic disclosed its own confidential IPO filing. Together, the moves signal that the AI industry’s largest startups are preparing for a new phase where investors are looking at clear paths to AI profitability.
Founded in 2015, OpenAI broke AI into the mainstream with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Over three years later, the AI assistant now sees more than 1 billion monthly active users. OpenAI is now trying to monetize that user growth by bringing ads to ChatGPT. It has also poured billions into AI infrastructure and computing resources.
But the rivalry between developers of the large language models that power these tools is heating up.
OpenAI was last valued at more than $850 billion. Anthropic, meanwhile, raised capital at a $965 billion post-money valuation.
In recent months, Anthropic’s Claude has become immensely popular in enterprises, narrowing what had been OpenAI’s perceived lead in deploying LLMs at scale across workplace software.
Anthropic adoption among businesses rose 3.8% in April to 34.4% of businesses, while OpenAI adoption fell 2.9% to 32.3%, according to a survey from payments startup Ramp, based on a sample of 50,000 businesses that use Ramp’s technology.
