OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told staff the artificial intelligence company will go public in 2027, or sooner if its business keeps accelerating.
Key Points:
- Friar gave employees the clearest internal timeline yet for a listing, calling the offering a milestone rather than an endpoint.
- She told staff not to worry if Anthropic uncovers its own confidential filing first and reaches the market in September.
- Anthropic outearned OpenAI by a wide margin in the second quarter, and its annualized run rate is now well ahead.
OpenAI IPO Timeline Now Points To 2027
Friar delivered the remarks at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, and two people who attended relayed her comments afterward. She described the offering as a financing step rather than a destination, pointing to the $122 billion the company raised in March as the source of that flexibility. OpenAI submitted a confidential S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, one week after its rival did the same, and it has never named a target date in public.
"The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone," she told employees at the meeting, according to two people familiar with the session who were not authorized to speak publicly. The company carries a post-money valuation of $852 billion, a number that has drawn fresh scrutiny as its closest competitor grows faster and spends less.
Neither company has set a listing date.
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Anthropic Revenue Lead Reshapes The Race
Rival Anthropic moved first on that paperwork, and its financials have since pulled ahead. Preliminary second-quarter revenue surged past $11.5 billion, up from $787 million a year earlier and $4.73 billion in the first quarter, while OpenAI booked $6.7 billion over the same three months.
OpenAI's quarterly operating loss reportedly widened to $12.3 billion over that stretch, up from $9.3 billion.
Anthropic's annualized run rate reached $65 billion at the end of July, against more than $40 billion at OpenAI, though the two companies may not calculate that measure the same way. Backers expect a valuation near $2 trillion when it lists, and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management said Anthropic has been "much more token efficient than OpenAI," with the gap now closing.
OpenAI Executive Exits Shadow The Listing
Friar told employees not to worry if Anthropic uncovers its filing in the coming weeks and lists in September. "We are running our own race," she said. Her slides put the OpenAI revenue run rate up 35% quarter to date, enterprise revenue up 50%, and coding and work products at 20 million weekly users.
That reassurance lands after months of churn in the senior ranks, with Fidji Simo stepping down as OpenAI's second-ranking executive in July.
Brad Lightcap announced his own exit on Aug. 11, and Denise Dresser was replaced as revenue chief two days later by former Wiz president Dali Rajic, after less than a year in the job.
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