OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and one of the leading global references in artificial intelligence, has publicly announced its intention to list on Wall Street. While no specific date has been confirmed by the company, forecasts point to it happening in the fourth quarter of this year when the firm led by Sam Altman will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Currently, OpenAI has filed confidential paperwork to become a publicly traded company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulator of the New York market. With an estimated valuation of around 800 billion dollars, the company behind ChatGPT is poised to make history in a 2026 that is shaping up to bea year never before conceived in terms of IPO volumes. OpenAI is the third player in this scenario.
Anthropic, behind the Claude and Mythos systems, recently announced that it is also working on its stock market debut, expected in the last months of this year. They are joined by the megasale of SpaceX, the aerospace and AI company founded by Elon Musk, which is set to debut this Friday. Combined, these three operations are estimated to raise capital worth around 200 billion dollars; 30 billion more than the market capitalization of Inditex, the largest Spanish listed company. OpenAI alone is expected to seek another 70 billion dollars from investors, similar to SpaceX's IPO, although it is unknown if they will allow retail investors to participate, as Musk did by reserving 30% of the offering for the retail public.
The urgency to raise funds from investors has pushed OpenAI to act quickly. All are competing to raise capital in a market that is highly demanding for financing projects related to artificial intelligence. It is not just about IPOs - Anthropic aims for around 50 billion dollars - but also about issuing debt to support projects and investments. "Our numbers suggest that, under conservative assumptions, these three mega IPOs (SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI) and the recent announcement by Alphabet would demand a capital range of between 300,000 - 350,000 million dollars, which, in relative terms to the American stock market, is just 0.5% of the S&P 500," according to Banca March.
"We recently submitted a confidential Form S-1. We anticipate it will leak, so we are announcing it," confirmed OpenAI in a statement in the early hours of the Spanish morning in accordance with the Securities Act of 1933, emphasizing that the announcement does not constitute a sale offer or a solicitation of an offer to buy shares.
"We have not yet decided on the date; it could be delayed, as there are aspects we want to address that are likely easier as a private company," warned OpenAI, for whom starting the process provides the option to go public sooner if it proves to be the most convenient.
Last April, OpenAI raised 122 billion dollars (105.795 billion euros) in its latest funding round, led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, giving the startup a valuation of 852 billion dollars (738.834 billion euros).