AI pioneer OpenAI has made a confidential IPO filing

OpenAI, which launched the artificial intelligence race with the release of chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, has filed a confidential application for an IPO in the US. The company has not yet decided on the timing of the listing. OpenAI announced the filing following rival AI startup Anthropic, which is now valued by investors at a higher valuation than the creator of ChatGPT.

"We recently confidentially filed [an IPO filing on Form] S-1. We were expecting [information] to leak, so we're just announcing it. We haven't decided on a timeline yet; it may take some time as there are things we want to do that would probably be easier for a private company to accomplish," OpenAI said in a statement on its website. What kind of actions it is talking about, it did not explain: it only noted that it is "a complex set of trade-offs" and that it may "go public sooner if that proves to be the best option."

No details of a possible listing were given in the OpenAI announcement.

A week ago, on June 1, AI startup Anthropic, which created chatbot Claude, announced a confidential filing for an IPO in the US. It said this gives it the opportunity to go public after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) completes its document review. "The conduct of the proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors," the company said at the time. The number of shares to be offered to investors and the offering price have not yet been determined, Anthropic added at the time.

The listings of OpenAI and Anthropic may turn out to be one of the largest in history, along with the initial public offering of Elon Musk's space company SpaceX. Trading in the latter's securities on the stock exchange may begin as early as June 12.

At the end of Ma, Anthropic closed a funding round with a valuation of $965 billion, surpassing the value of OpenAI: it was valued at $852 billion at the end of March.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor