NEW YORK – OpenAI is leaning toward holding off on an initial public offering (IPO) until 2027, the New York Times reported, citing three people involved in the company’s deliberations.
Bankers advising the ChatGPT maker on its IPO plans cautioned that recent volatility in tech stocks, as well as in SpaceX’s shares following its record IPO, could dampen enthusiasm from retail investors for OpenAI’s offering, the newspaper reported.
Sam Altman, the artificial intelligence company’s chief executive officer, pushed advisers including bankers and lawyers to target a valuation of US$1 trillion (S$1.3 trillion), NYT said. OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley on a potential listing as soon as the fall, Bloomberg News has reported.
An OpenAI representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a statement on June 9.
“We 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,” it said in the statement. “But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
OpenAI and rival Anthropic have been racing to make their Wall Street debuts as soon as 2026, in a bid to attract public market investors and support their heavy spending on chips and data centres for AI.
Anthropic, once viewed as an underdog relative to OpenAI, has seen revenue soar in 2026 thanks to the success of its AI software, including products that help streamline the process of writing and debugging code. The Claude maker filed confidentially to go public shortly before OpenAI.
OpenAI raised US$122 billion in a funding round from investors earlier in 2026 to support its spending spree on AI infrastructure. The financing valued the ChatGPT maker at US$852 billion, including the money raised. BLOOMBERG
