ChatGPT maker filed preliminary paperwork that would open the door to it becoming a publicly traded company, the third in a powerhouse trio of racing to Wall Street debuts.
The San Francisco-based company said Monday it has filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
鈥淲e expect it to leak so we鈥檙e just announcing it,鈥� the company said in a written statement. 鈥淲e 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. But it鈥檚 a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.鈥�
OpenAI’s move follows its rival June 1 disclosure that it is also moving toward an initial public offering of shares. Both are now following Elon Musk’s space company , which has started an IPO roadshow pitching itself as an AI-focused space company.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first publicly floated the possibility of an IPO last fall, describing it as for the company given its size and the need for vast amounts of capital to advance its technology.
OpenAI began in 2015 as dedicated to developing AI for the common good and is now a company valued at $852 billion.
Paving the way for going public was OpenAI鈥檚 decision last year to reorganize its business structure and convert itself into a public benefit corporation even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit.
Also clearing the way for an IPO was OpenAI’s against Musk in a federal jury trial last month. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, had sued the company seeking to oust Altman from its leadership and unravel its conversion to a for-profit business. A judge dismissed the case after the jury found Musk filed his lawsuit too late.
OpenAI has not yet publicly disclosed how much money it is making or when it plans to turn a profit. Much like Anthropic and SpaceX, the company has been losing more money than it makes because of the huge costs of building AI. OpenAI faces its fiercest competition from fast-growing Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021 and maker of the increasingly popular chatbot Claude.
In an April interview, OpenAI鈥檚 chief financial officer Sarah Friar declined to give a timeline for a potential IPO but said the company was already 鈥渁cting with the good hygiene of a public company,鈥� such as by measuring its revenue in the way a publicly traded firm would have to report earnings to the SEC.
鈥淚 want us to be ready,鈥� she told The Associated Press. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 good to be able to tap the public markets. They鈥檙e much bigger than the private markets if you believe compute is a competitive advantage.鈥�
She said OpenAI鈥檚 current valuation would make it one of the 15 biggest companies in the S&P 500.
She also said there is a 鈥渃redentializing moment of being a public company.鈥�
鈥淎t that point, people are checking your balance sheet, the SEC is governing you and so on,鈥� she said.
In a separate statement Monday published around the same time as the announcement of the confidential filing, Altman outlined a broad vision for OpenAI that including three big goals: building an automated AI researcher, accelerating economic growth and giving 鈥渆veryone on Earth a personal AGI,鈥� which stands for artificial general intelligence or a form of AI that surpasses humans at many tasks.
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