OpenAI is gearing up for what could be its biggest public market debut in history, preparing to secretly file a draft IPO prospectus as early as Friday, CNBC confirmed Wednesday.
The artificial intelligence company, valued by private investors at more than $850 billion, works with the following banks: goldman sachs and morgan stanley A person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the details are confidential, said they would prepare a submission in the coming days or weeks.
“As part of our normal governance, we regularly evaluate various strategic options,” an OpenAI representative said in a statement. “We remain focused on execution.”
As previously reported by CNBC, OpenAI is preparing for an IPO as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, told CNBC last month that it is “hygienic” for a company of OpenAI’s size to “look, feel and act” like a publicly traded company, but declined to comment on a specific timeline.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley did not comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the confidential filing.
OpenAI’s preparations are well underway as Elon Musk’s competitor SpaceX, which merged with xAI earlier this year, is scheduled to release its IPO prospectus as soon as Wednesday. SpaceX’s prospectus lists Goldman Sachs first on the left, followed by Morgan Stanley, followed by Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.
SpaceX’s latest offer is expected to bring in a record amount of money since it was most recently valued at $1.25 trillion in February. The company filed a confidential filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are taking their bitter rivalry to Wall Street after the former friends and co-founders spent much of last month facing each other in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, company president Greg Brockman and others for backtracking on a pledge to keep the company a nonprofit organization.
On Monday, an advisory jury said Musk took too long to file his lawsuit, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately adopted the verdict. In a post on social network X, Musk called the decision a “calendar technicality.”
OpenAI sparked the AI boom in 2022 with the introduction of the ChatGPT chatbot, and has since grown to become one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
The company has raised more than $180 billion from investors and continues to burn through cash at a historic pace. As Altman races towards an IPO, he is under pressure from investors to show that the numbers work, while competition from rivals, particularly Anthropic, which has won in the enterprise and AI coding markets, is increasing.
Anthropic is currently in talks with investors to raise funding at a valuation of $900 billion, which would put it above OpenAI. In April, the company announced that its annual sales had exceeded $30 billion.
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