OpenAI confirms it has lodged a confidential draft prospectus for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a required first step.
The filing positions the ChatGPT developer as the third heavyweight AI player lining up for Wall Street, following rival Anthropic’s paperwork a week earlier.
The timing lands just days before SpaceX’s long-awaited IPO, which is expected to raise about $US86 billion and imply a towering $US1.78 trillion valuation for the rocket-and-AI business.
OpenAI’s listing will expose a sharp trade-off that public investors now confront in generative AI, with extraordinary revenue expansion paired with towering losses.
The company is widely viewed as one of the fastest-growing software businesses ever, but its infrastructure and model-training costs remain huge and could stay that way for years.
That dynamic mirrors the broader generative AI sector, where hyperscale computing spend often dominates near-term profitability.
Investors will need to judge whether scale and data advantages outweigh the drag of those ongoing costs.
The trio of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX looks set to define the next phase of the AI financing cycle, shifting the action from private markets to public exchanges.
Their offerings could reset valuation benchmarks for listed AI groups and sharpen scrutiny of business models built on expensive cloud, chips and research.
Market watchers expect intense demand, but also highlight growing questions around sustainability of growth, regulatory pressures and competitive responses from established tech giants.
How investors ultimately price OpenAI’s mix of breakneck growth and deep losses could signal where the AI boom stands in its market lifecycle.
