They leaked it. Sort of.
OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 registration statement on Monday. It’s for an IPO. Everyone expected this. According to The New York Times, the initial public offering “could be one of the largest to hit Wall Street.” Big stakes. Huge implications for the whole artificial intelligence boom.
OpenAI didn’t beat around the bush on X.
“We recently submitted a confidential S-1,” the statement read. “We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it.”
Simple. Direct. They haven’t picked a date. It might be a while. They said there are things they can do more easily while staying private. But they kept the door open. Going public sooner is an option. Trade-offs. Always trade-offs.
What does confidential mean anyway? It means OpenAI gave its paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission but hid the details. You can’t flip through their financials yet. No prospectus. No inside look. A public filing would expose all that data to investors right now. This doesn’t.
A rep for OpenAI didn’t come back to my request for comment immediately. Standard.
(Quick note: Ziff Davis—my parent company, CNET—sued OpenAI in 2025 over copyright infringement. Allegedly, the training of their AI systems violated Ziff’s rights. I’m just saying.)
From Garage to Globally Dominant
Remember when it was just an idea? OpenAI launched in 2015. Elon Musk was there at the start. Sam Altman runs it now. Musk left the board in 2018. Things got messy later—he sued Altman. The trial ended last month. Altman won.
Then came 2022. ChatGPT dropped.
Nothing has spread faster in app history. Hundreds of millions of users joined in record time. Now “ChatGPT” is just a word for AI to a lot of people. It’s generative. It talks back. It uses large language models.
Investors are watching closely. Really closely. Why? Because Altman has warned about an AI bubble. Are they right?
If OpenAI debuts publicly, it’s joining a crowded club. SpaceX is going public too. So is Anthropic—OpenAI’s main rival in AI. Everyone is rushing to sell shares.
Why Everyone Wants Their Money
The rush isn’t just ego. It’s cash flow. AI costs billions. Not millions. Billions.
You need data centers. You need chips. You need insane amounts of electricity to run the training models. Private money has limits. Public money doesn’t really. Investors are hungry. They want to turn those massive bets into profits.
But look at the books.
So far? It’s all speculation. Valuations are based on promise, not actual earnings. One online tracker showed something chilling. Frontline AI companies have spent more than double what they’ve generated in revenue. That’s billions in debt. Just digging deeper holes.
OpenAI won’t show us exactly how deep the hole is yet. It’s private. That keeps the exact numbers murky.
Rumor mill says partners and backers have taken on about $96 billion in debt just to fund the buildout. Other estimates suggest OpenAI has committed roughly $1.4 trillion to long-term compute and energy needs. That is a terrifying number. Or a promising one, depending on your timeline.
The Risks of Going Public
Being famous helps. The brand is everywhere. Products are sticky. Demand for stock will be high. Sure.
But scrutiny follows money.
Once public, OpenAI can’t hide its lack of profitability anymore. High operating costs become front-page news. Financial transparency invites regulators too. Legal battles over privacy, copyright, safety—they all get magnified.
Does the optimistic projection match economic reality?
Some critics say no. They point to a huge gap between what AI is supposed to do and what it actually earns. An IPO forces the market to price that future expansion right now. With all the uncertainty out there? That’s risky.
The race to the IPO market feels like a stress test. Not just for OpenAI. For the whole industry. Is this a durable business model? Or is it a house of cards waiting for a wind?
We’ll see when the doors open. Until then, the clock ticks. 💸
