OpenAI is saying it has no plans to go public this year â but senior Wall Street executives say they fully expect it will happen in the first quarter of 2027, On The Money has learned.
The artificial intelligence giant run by Sam Altman has been quick to shoot down rumors that itâs preparing to IPO imminently now that archrival Anthropic has filed its S-1 as a precursor to a deal that’s expected in late November.
Altman has been among the AI industry’s top alarmists â as has Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei â although that isnât stopping the latter from cashing in on an initial public offering that could value the company as high as $2 trillion, possibly even surpassing SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO.
Warnings of runaway AI agents that could trigger global armageddon are said to be behind Altman’s reticence, but top Wall Street executives are more inclined to watch what Altman does rather than what he says, sources with first hand knowledge of the matter tell On The Money.
Instead of scaling back on AI, Altman has been raising money privately â around $300 billion in a round that will value OpenAI at $1 trillion, people close to the firm say.
Meanwhile, finance bigs are warning Altman that his iPO window could be closing with rising fears of an AI bubble and competition for investor capital â not just from the Anthropic sale but also a planned massive secondary stock sale by Meta, as first reported by On The Money
With that, one Wall Street CEO said the OpenAI IPO is coming “probably in the first quarter” of 2027.
An OpenAI spokesman had no immediate comment on the timing disclosed in this report. In a statement, the rep previously told On The Money that the company has “been consistent in saying that we have not set a timetable for an IPO. Last month our CEO made clear that the priority is safety and that we will not (be) going public this year.”
AI is considered a game-changing technology with broad applications in business, medicine and even the military. Yet concerns are growing that major players are ramping up spending and borrowing to levels that they can’t pay down.
A host of domestic and foreign players are competing in the space. That said, Wall Street bankers have been prodding top AI companies to tap the market before a possible AI meltdown hits. SpaceX was first out of the gate with an $86 billion IPO in June. Meta is now planning to sell $95 billion in stock through several rounds, on top of Anthropic’s IPO sale, the size of which hasn’t been determined.
While Anthropic is valuing itself at $2 trillion, and the private fundraising for OpenAI gives it a $1 trillion valuation, the latter’s market value could be conceivably higher if the AI rally is given a jolt coming into the new year with a successful offering by Amodei.
In fact, people close to Amodei say his recent coyness about the timing of the sale was motivated less by market concerns and more about supply chain issues involving the Defense Department’s ban on using its AI systems for military uses. The ban came after a very public spat between the company and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth when Amodei refused to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI models.
Anthropic is challenging the order in court, and its S-1 shows that while losing money, Anthropic’s revenue growth remains strong as it seeks to dominate corporate and other AI usage.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has none of these issues with the Pentagon, which would appear to make its IPO path easier.
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