OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT’, has taken an important step towards listing a potential exchange by offering confidential preliminary paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ’ (SEC).
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company announced the application on Monday, becoming the latest major artificial intelligence company to approach the initial public offering (IPO).
In a statement from OpenAI, “We are waiting for the leak, so we are just announcing ” said. “We have not yet decided on the timing; It may take some time because there are easier things we want to do as a private company. But it's a complex set of concessions, and that gives us the option to go public sooner, if that's what's best.”
The move comes after rival Anthropic’ announced on June 1 that it was also looking for an IPO. Both companies join Elon Musk’'s SpaceX’, which has embarked on an IPO publicity trip while positioning itself as an artificial intelligence-focused space company.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first raised the possibility of an IPO last year, describing it as ’en possible way given the company's scale and the need for a significant amount of capital to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization focused on developing artificial intelligence for the public good, OpenAI has since grown into a company worth $852 billion (€730 billion).
The application came at a time when eMarketer analyst Nate Elliott ’ described “ as a precarious moment” for the company, with OpenAI’ facing increasing competition from Google and Anthropic’.
Elliott, “But OpenAI’ doesn't have much room to look for the enormous capital needed to support its costs, ” said.
An important step was taken on the way to the public offering last year when OpenAI’ restructured its business and became a company working in the public interest, remaining under the control of its non-profit parent.
The company also removed a significant legal hurdle after defeating Musk’ at a federal jury hearing last month. Musk, one of the co-founders and one of the first donors, had sought to remove Altman’ from leadership and reverse OpenAI’'s transition to a for-profit model. The judge dismissed the case after the jurors found that Musk’ had filed the case too late.
Why does OpenAI’ need new capital?
OpenAI did not publicly disclose its revenues or provide a timeline for profitability. Similar to Anthropic and SpaceX’e, the company is losing more than it earns as it continues to spend heavily on infrastructure and development while competing in the increasingly crowded artificial intelligence market. Major competitors include Anthropic’in Claude chatbot’u and Google’'s Gemini assistant.
Speaking to The Associated Press’e in April, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar said the company was already working with the discipline expected from an exchange-traded company, including measuring revenue against the standards required for SEC reporting.
Friar, “ said, "I want us to be ready, ”." “I think it's a good thing to be able to take advantage of public markets. These are much larger than specialty markets.”
OpenAI added that ’'s current valuation would place it among the 15 largest companies in the S&P 500 index.
Friar said “ has a moment of authentication of being a publicly traded company. “ At this point, people are checking your balance sheet, the SEC is managing you, etc. ”
In a separate statement released on Monday, Altman outlined OpenAI’nin's long-term goals, including developing an automated AI researcher, accelerating economic growth, and providing a personal AGI“ (artificial general intelligence that can outperform humans in many tasks) to everyone around the world.
Altman said OpenAI’ is moving from pure research to commercial products and is now entering a third phase, focusing on the broad distribution of AI-driven benefits.
“We are working to ensure that earnings are widely shared, ” said. “Everyone should have the opportunity to get a meaningful share of the prosperity created by artificial intelligence.”
The comments came days after Altman’ met with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who proposed giving a 50 percent stake in artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI to the public. They also follow U.S. President Donald Trump ’'s statements in support of the idea of giving the public a share in the growth of the artificial intelligence sector.
