OpenAI says it filed confidential IPO as it positions itself for AI arms race

OpenAI has filed a confidential initial public offering, the ChatGPT maker said Monday, bringing it one step closer to its official market debut. 

“We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it,” OpenAI said in a statement published Monday to its website. “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. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

Going public will allow OpenAI, which is valued at $852 billion, to inject more cash into its business as the AI arms race heats up.

SpaceX, which owns Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, recently filed its own IPO, detailing its plans to build out more AI computing power. Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, also filed its own IPO last week.

A confidential filing allows OpenAI to gather private feedback from regulators before it submits a public-facing document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. When the S-1 arrives, it will contain details about the AI company’s finances and which parts of the business it plans to invest in.

OpenAI’s filing comes just weeks after a judge tossed out a case Musk brought against the company that could have derailed its IPO plans. Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together in 2015.