It's official: OpenAI files IPO

OpenAI has officially filed for an IPO, setting the stage for a blockbuster year of IPOs, as both SpaceX and Anthropic are also going public

On Monday, OpenAI published a statement on its website announcing that it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering, or IPO, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"We recently submitted a confidential S-1," OpenAI said. "We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it."

OpenAI did not share any specific details regarding the terms or size of the IPO. However, the company did explicitly address the timing of the IPO, in that there is no timeline for when OpenAI plans to go public.

"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," reads OpenAI's statement. "But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."

While the company isn't sharing much, it's been previously reported by Reuters that OpenAI is eyeing an IPO as early as September at a valuation of $1 trillion.

While OpenAI may be seen as the AI industry leader, one of its biggest competitors, Anthropic, beat the company to the punch with its own IPO plans. Anthropic announced last week that it filed to go public with the SEC. Like OpenAI, Anthropic has not yet shared any details regarding share price or timing.

Anthropic's own IPO filing statement came just days after the company announced a fundraising round that valued the company at $965 billion, more than OpenAI's $852 billion. Anthropic also shared revenue numbers that surpassed OpenAI's reported revenue.

OpenAI and Anthropic are far and away the most valuable privately held AI companies in the world, along with xAI, which recently merged with SpaceX. However, once OpenAI and Anthropic go public, they will find themselves multiple trillions of dollars behind tech giants within the AI industry like Nvidia, Google, and Microsoft.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.