OpenAI is leaning toward postponing its long-anticipated initial public offering until 2027, as management weighs the risks of entering increasingly volatile public markets against the benefits of remaining private while it continues investing aggressively in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The discussions, according to a report by The New York Times citing three people involved in the company’s internal deliberations, highlight the changing calculus for one of the world’s most valuable private technology companies. While OpenAI and rival Anthropic have spent much of the past year preparing for Wall Street debuts, recent turbulence in technology stocks and the sharp pullback in newly listed AI companies are prompting executives and advisers to reconsider the timing.
According to the report, investment bankers advising the ChatGPT developer warned that the recent volatility in technology shares, coupled with the steep decline in SpaceX stock following its record-breaking IPO, could weaken retail investor appetite for another blockbuster AI listing.
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Those concerns have become more pronounced after SpaceX, which staged one of the largest public offerings in history, saw a significant portion of its post-listing gains evaporate within weeks, underscoring how quickly investor sentiment can shift even toward companies viewed as AI leaders.
The report said OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has instructed advisers, including bankers and lawyers, to pursue a valuation of $1 trillion, a figure that would make OpenAI one of the world’s most valuable publicly traded technology companies from its market debut.
Bloomberg previously reported that OpenAI has been working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on preparations for a potential public listing as early as this fall. However, no final decision has been made. OpenAI has already taken a key procedural step by confidentially filing for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, giving the company flexibility to move ahead once market conditions become more favorable.
In a statement issued on June 9, OpenAI emphasized that the filing does not commit the company to an immediate listing.
“We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” the company said.
“But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
Remaining private would allow OpenAI greater flexibility as it continues deploying unprecedented sums into AI infrastructure without the quarterly earnings scrutiny that accompanies public markets.
The company has emerged as one of the biggest spenders in the AI race, investing heavily in graphics processors, data centers, custom AI hardware, and advanced model development to maintain its competitive position against rivals including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI.
Earlier this year, OpenAI raised $122 billion in one of the largest private fundraising rounds ever completed by a technology company. The financing valued the ChatGPT maker at approximately $852 billion, including the new capital, cementing its status as one of the world’s most valuable private enterprises.
That enormous fundraising has reduced immediate pressure to tap public markets for financing, giving management greater flexibility to wait for stronger market conditions and potentially command a higher valuation.
The report also shows that the IPO race among leading AI developers is becoming increasingly competitive. OpenAI and Anthropic have both confidentially filed to go public, with each seeking to attract public-market investors to help finance the enormous capital requirements associated with building frontier AI systems.
Anthropic, once widely viewed as trailing OpenAI in the generative AI race, has significantly narrowed the gap after rapid revenue growth driven by strong enterprise demand for its Claude family of AI models, particularly coding assistants that help software developers write, review, and debug code. The company’s improving commercial performance has strengthened investor confidence that multiple AI model developers can generate sustainable revenue despite the industry’s enormous infrastructure costs.
Still, analysts say the economics of frontier AI remain heavily dependent on continuous access to capital. Training sophisticated AI models requires billions of dollars in computing infrastructure, while inference, the process of serving AI models to millions of users, continues to consume massive amounts of graphics processors, memory chips, and electricity.
Those capital demands have sparked an unprecedented investment cycle across the technology sector. Major hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, are collectively expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars this year expanding AI infrastructure, while startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic continue raising record amounts from private investors.
Against that backdrop, delaying an IPO until 2027 could allow OpenAI to continue scaling as a private company while avoiding near-term market volatility. It could also provide additional time to grow revenue, strengthen profitability, and potentially justify Altman’s ambitious $1 trillion valuation target before eventually entering public markets