Topline
OpenAI is now leaning toward delaying its public debut from later this year to next year, unnamed sources told The New York Times, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX stock tumbles after its record IPO and the public tech market slumps more broadly.
Key Facts
OpenAI hired bankers and lawyers eyeing an initial public offering as early as the third or fourth quarter of this year, with CEO Sam Altman pushing them to engineer a $1 trillion valuation, the Times reported, citing three people involved in the talks.
Over the past week, OpenAI’s advisers have cautioned the company that a public listing may not be met with enough enthusiasm due to the volatile public tech market, per the report.
When advisers offered a choice between waiting until 2027 for a $1 trillion debut or accepting a lower valuation for a faster one, Altman called any cut to the trillion-dollar figure a “nonstarter,” one person in contact with him told the Times.
OpenAI confirmed earlier this month it had filed confidential paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public but had not committed to a timeline, with the Wall Street Journal previously reporting the company planned to list as early as September.
There has been internal hesitation about the public debut since before the confidential filing, the Times reported, with employees including chief financial officer Sarah Friar expressing concern on the company’s finances this year, according to the Journal.
big number
$852 billion. That’s OpenAI’s most recent valuation. The company reported roughly $13 billion in revenue last year on $21 billion in net loss, with $600 billion in projected spending on compute and hardware until 2030. Amid growing doubts about whether AI companies can turn a profit, the company is now hunting for new revenue, experimenting with ads inside ChatGPT and e-commerce tie-ups with Shopify and Stripe, while paring back money-losing ventures including its Sora video app.
key background
OpenAI’s hesitation comes amid a crowded 2026 IPO pipeline that has drawn many of tech’s most valuable private companies, including the company’s chief rival Anthropic and SpaceX. Anthropic confidentially filed on June 1 for its reported late 2026 public debut—a week before OpenAI announced it had filed confidentially. Anthropic raised funding at a $965 billion valuation in late May, overtaking OpenAI’s private valuation for the first time. SpaceX was the first of the crop to go public on June 12. Its debut raised more than $85 billion, sending the company’s valuation to $2.77 trillion and Musk’s net worth to as high as $1.4 trillion. The stock has plummeted since, closing at $153 on Thursday after topping $225 last week, and Musk has lost his trillionaire status. The broader markets have been shaky, with tech shares dragging down indexes as investors question whether AI companies can deliver on their valuations. Beyond the AI names, a wave of tech companies including Strava, Discord, Kraken and smart-ring maker Oura filed confidentially earlier this year.
tangent
The SpaceX IPO landed less than a month after two of OpenAI’s cofounders, Altman and Musk, took their long-running feud to the courtroom. A federal jury in Oakland, California, ruled against Musk on May 18, finding he waited too long to sue Altman and OpenAI over claims they violated an alleged promise to keep the company a charitable nonprofit. The jury found the claims fell outside a three-year statute of limitations. Musk, who first filed the suit in 2024, dismissed the decision on X as a “calendar technicality” and vowed to appeal, though Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers signaled deep skepticism, saying she was prepared to dismiss any appeal. The verdict cleared a legal cloud hanging over OpenAI’s restructuring right as both magnates were steering their companies toward the public market.