OpenAI Files for IPO With US Regulators

An IPO turns a private company into a public one and lets it raise large amounts of money by selling shares on a stock exchange. AI (artificial intelligence) firms need this money because of the enormous cost of "compute" — the powerful computers used to train and run their models. OpenAI's most recent private valuation reached 852 billion US dollars. Rival Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, recently overtook it after raising 65 billion dollars at a 965 billion dollar valuation. Anthropic also filed for an IPO last week, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which owns the Grok chatbot through its merger with xAI, may list later this same week.

Whichever firm reaches the public markets first will likely gain better access to the money that investors have set aside for the AI sector. According to the Financial Times, OpenAI is responding by rebuilding ChatGPT into a "superapp" that bundles coding tools and software agents, because Anthropic's Claude is seen as stronger at coding. Earlier reports said OpenAI missed internal revenue and user targets, raising fresh doubts about whether its heavy spending can turn into profits. The triple listing will be a major test of public investor interest in the AI boom.