When Is OpenAI Going Public? Here's What to Know About the Rumored IPO

ChatGPT's parent company is rumored to be preparing to go public, and if you've ever used the chatbot to write an email, plan a trip or settle a debate, this initial public offering (IPO) will affect you one way or another.

OpenAI is reportedly working with investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on a confidential IPO filing that could be submitted to regulators as soon as next week. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company aims to begin trading as early as September.

However, those plans aren’t set in stone. So before you get excited — or reach for your brokerage app — here's what you should know.

How OpenAI's IPO could affect ChatGPT

OpenAI faces a costly problem: Building and maintaining artificial intelligence models requires enormous computing infrastructure. The company has made significant data-center spending commitments that will require substantially more revenue to support.

Going public would give OpenAI access to a much larger pool of capital because it would open the company to public stock markets instead of relying mainly on private investors, venture capital firms or internal cash flow. But it also means the company would have to answer to shareholders, which has implications beyond Wall Street.

When consumer tech companies go public, the pressure to grow revenue and hit quarterly targets can reshape the products people rely on. Netflix, for example, raised subscription prices repeatedly and cracked down on password sharing starting in 2022, while Reddit expanded monetization efforts around its API and advertising business ahead of its IPO in March 2024.

ChatGPT currently offers a free tier alongside its paid plans, but as a public company, OpenAI will face scrutiny over whether it’s doing enough to monetize its over 900 million weekly active users — of which only around 50 million are paid subscribers. That could result in changes to what's free and what's paywalled.

What is OpenAI worth?

OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in a recent funding round, making it one of the most anticipated IPOs in years. For context, that's larger than the market cap of most Fortune 500 companies.

This number matters for investors because it sets expectations. Retail investors buying OpenAI stock once it goes public will likely be paying a premium on top of an already enormous valuation, and the company has yet to prove it can generate profits at a scale that justifies that valuation.

Is OpenAI profitable?

OpenAI's chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, has reportedly told company leadership that it may need more time before going public.

According to the Journal, OpenAI has missed several internal revenue and user targets. It also faces growing competition from Google and from Anthropic, the makers of Claude, which has grown faster than OpenAI in recent months and is also exploring an IPO, per the Financial Times.

Because OpenAI has so far been a private company, it has never had to disclose its finances publicly. The S-1 filing — the prospectus the company will eventually be required to make public to IPO — will be the first opportunity for outside investors to evaluate its books directly. That includes costs, debt obligations and cash flow.

Is OpenAI stock worth investing in?

Whether OpenAI is worth investing in will largely depend on your risk tolerance. High-profile tech IPOs have a mixed track record: Uber, Lyft and Rivian, for example, all debuted with enormous valuations and delivered rocky early returns for investors who bought in at launch.

OpenAI also has an unusual corporate history. It launched as a nonprofit research lab, converted to a for-profit structure to raise capital and only recently completed the structural changes legally necessary to pursue a public offering.

A lawsuit filed by co-founder Elon Musk challenging that conversion went to trial this year. A jury sided with OpenAI on technical grounds and the judge dismissed Musk’s claims, but Musk has said he plans to appeal (all while he separately pursues a major IPO of his own for SpaceX).

The S-1, once public, will be the most important document for investors to read before making any decision. Until then, the company’s $852 billion valuation is mostly just a number — not a verdict on what the company is actually worth to shareholders.

How to invest in OpenAI before its IPO

Retail investors can’t directly buy the company's stock yet because it's still private. But there are several ways to invest in OpenAI indirectly.

Microsoft is the clearest example. The software giant has invested heavily in OpenAI and built its technology into products like Azure, Bing and Copilot. Nvidia has also benefited from rising demand because companies like OpenAI rely on its chips to train and run AI models at scale.

Investors can also gain exposure through ETFs that hold large positions in AI-focused companies, including major tech firms tied to the growth of generative AI infrastructure.

Some private-market platforms occasionally offer access to pre-IPO OpenAI shares, though those opportunities are generally limited to accredited investors (people or institutions that meet certain income or wealth requirements set by financial regulators) and often come with high minimum investments and added risk.