OpenAI’s chief financial officer told employees the startup will go public in 2027 or sooner.

Rival AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic filed for IPOs last quarter. Although the latter made no secret that it expected to go public in September or October, the former did not provide such clear information to investors. It is believed that OpenAI missed the opportunity to IPO ahead of SpaceX and Anthropic, and has now chosen to hold an IPO in 2027.

Image source: OpenAI

according to CNBCOpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said this during a recent staff meeting: “We will become a public company in 2027, but if the business allows we will do so earlier”. An IPO is not a finish line, she said, but just another stage and a new way to raise money. Friar said the company had raised $122 billion in funding in March, giving it some financial flexibility.

She also advised OpenAI employees not to worry about Anthropic’s early IPO. According to her, the latter can enter the stock exchange as early as September, and there is nothing to worry about, because “OpenAI is starting its own race”. OpenAI’s capital now stands at $852 billion, and in order to justify this amount, the company must disclose more information about its financial situation to investors, otherwise they will only be very cautious about financing its further development.

OpenAI’s internal briefing for employees contains information about the startup’s business developments. Since the beginning of the quarter, overall revenue has grown 35%, enterprise segment revenue has grown 50%, and the creation of tools for professional software developers and artificial intelligence agents attracts 20 million active users per week. In the second quarter, OpenAI’s revenue increased 18% quarter-on-quarter to $6.7 billion. Its annual revenue recently exceeded $40 billion. However, rival Anthropic had sales of over $65 billion by the end of July, so in that sense OpenAI is slightly behind its rivals. According to some estimates, Anthropic’s quarterly revenue could reach $11.5 billion based on results from the last reporting period. OpenAI President Greg Brockman recently urged people to ignore the startup’s recent major personnel changes. He said too much attention has been focused on OpenAI, but a similar process exists at virtually any other company.