So OpenAI is going public. Or at least it’s starting the process of going public. Which in practice means filing a bunch of paperwork with regulators, waiting, and then eventually letting the rest of us buy shares.
The company confirmed Monday it submitted a confidential S-1 draft to regulators. That’s the document companies file before an IPO — kind of like a very detailed financial biography that the SEC reviews before it becomes public. Nobody outside of OpenAI and the regulators can read it yet.
The way OpenAI acknowledged this was very on-brand for a company run by Sam Altman. They posted about it in a blog, basically saying they figured the news would leak anyway so they might as well say it themselves first. Which is a very casual way to announce what could become one of the biggest stock market listings ever.
$852 Billion. Let That Number Breathe for a Second.
OpenAI’s most recent funding round valued the company at around $852 billion. That’s the post-money valuation — meaning after the new investment came in.
For context that puts it in the same conversation as some of the most valuable companies on earth. Not quite Apple or Microsoft territory but not far off either. And this is a company that isn’t profitable yet, is burning through enormous amounts of cash on compute, and is operating in a market that didn’t meaningfully exist five years ago.
Whether $852 billion is reasonable or completely detached from reality probably depends on what you think AI looks like in ten years. If ChatGPT and whatever comes after it becomes as fundamental to daily life as the internet itself — maybe that number is cheap. If competition eventually compresses margins and the whole thing becomes commoditized — maybe it’s wildly expensive.
Nobody actually knows. That’s what makes this interesting.
The Timing Is Genuinely Wild
OpenAI filing this week means three of the most anticipated companies in recent memory are all heading toward public markets within weeks of each other.
SpaceX is debuting this Friday. $1.75 trillion valuation. Biggest IPO in Wall Street history if it goes through at that number. And that’s happening literally days from now.
Anthropic — OpenAI’s main rival and also the company that makes Claude — filed its own confidential S-1 just last week. Expected to follow SpaceX to market within a few weeks.
And now OpenAI is in the queue too, potentially trading as early as September if things stay on track.
Three companies. Combined valuation that would be measured in the multiple trillions. All hitting public markets in the same few months. The IPO calendar right now looks less like a financial schedule and more like someone announced three superhero movies are releasing the same summer.
The Tender Offer Thing Is Worth Understanding
Alongside the IPO filing, OpenAI also plans to run a tender offer. This lets employees sell some of their private shares before the company actually goes public.
This is pretty common for startups that have been private for a long time. People who joined OpenAI years ago are sitting on paper wealth — shares that are worth a lot on paper but can’t actually be spent on anything until there’s a market to sell them. A tender offer gives some of those people a chance to get liquid without waiting for the full IPO process to complete.
It also manages a practical problem. If employees are sitting on huge share grants they can’t sell, it creates pressure and sometimes resentment. The tender offer relieves some of that before the IPO so the company isn’t walking into its public debut with a bunch of frustrated employees ready to dump shares the moment they’re allowed to.
OpenAI and Anthropic Going Public at the Same Time Is Genuinely Interesting
These two companies are direct competitors. Both building large language models. Both targeting the same enterprise customers. Both spending billions on compute. Both trying to convince the world their AI is safer and better than the other’s.
Now they’re both going to be public companies, with quarterly earnings calls, analyst coverage, and shareholders demanding growth metrics. That changes the dynamic in ways that are hard to fully predict.
Public companies face different pressures than private ones. Revenue growth, margin improvement, path to profitability — these become the metrics that Wall Street obsesses over every three months. Whether that pressure accelerates the AI race or distorts it in weird directions is an open question.
But one thing seems clear. 2026 was already shaping up as a big year for markets. SpaceX Friday, Anthropic in weeks, OpenAI in autumn, and the rest of the market trying to figure out rates and inflation in the background.
Whatever happens — it won’t be boring.