OpenAI’s move toward public markets raises a larger question: Is the rise of AI a lasting change or an expensive gamble?
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, CNET editor-in-chief, journalist and pop culture junkie, is co-author of “Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s,” as well as “The Totally Sweet ’90s.” She has been a journalist since 1989 and works for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and NBC News Digital. She is part of Generation X in terms of date of birth, words and deeds. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line.
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OpenAI, perhaps the best-known company in the booming artificial intelligence market, confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday. While there is no date yet for the company’s public offering, it is a highly anticipated move and, according to the New York Times, an OpenAI IPO “could be one of the largest public offerings to take place on Wall Street.”
“We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to be disclosed, so we just announced it,” OpenAI said in a statement published on X Monday afternoon. “We haven’t decided on the timeline yet; it may take a while because there are things we want to do that are probably easier as a private company. But it’s a complex set of tradeoffs and it gives us the opportunity to go public sooner if that turns out to be best.”
The confidential filing means that while OpenAI has likely begun the IPO process and submitted documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the details remain confidential. This is different from a public filing, where the company’s prospectus and financial information are available for investors to view.
A representative for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in 2025 against OpenAI, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis’ copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. (Musk left the company’s board in 2018, then sued Altman, in a lawsuit that ended in Altman’s favor. just last month.) In 2022, the company published ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot based on large language model technology. Few applications have grown as quickly as ChatGPT, which has brought together hundreds of millions of users in record time and has become, for many people, shorthand for AI chatbots.
The IPO will be closely watched, with investors wondering if Altman’s own warnings about an AI bubble are correct.
If OpenAI goes public, it will join a series of high-profile IPOs expected this year, including Musk’s SpaceX as well as Anthropic, OpenAI’s main rival in the artificial intelligence space.
The rush of IPOs partly shows how eager investors are to turn their massive bets on AI into profits, as companies scramble to raise the huge sums they need to keep going. AI is an expensive business, the costs of which depend on the computing power needed to train large language models as well as the data centers, chips, and electrical infrastructure needed to make them work.
Risks of public debuts
An OpenAI IPO would be a pivotal and high-stakes step. Until now, the AI sector has largely been driven by speculation, with valuations tied more to future promises than current profits. An online revenue and loss tracker for pioneering AI companies shows that AI development has cost more than twice what it has generated so far, suggesting billions of dollars in debt.
OpenAI’s exact debt is difficult to pin down precisely because it is a private company. Some reports indicate that its infrastructure partners and backers have taken on approximately $96 billion in debt to support AI development, and some estimates indicate that OpenAI has made approximately $1.4 trillion in long-term compute and energy commitments.
While widespread awareness of OpenAI’s brand and products may generate strong investor demand and support a high stock price, its IPO also exposes the company to scrutiny for its high operating costs and lack of profitability.
Greater financial transparency will also subject OpenAI to increased regulatory scrutiny, potentially exposing legal, privacy or copyright challenges.
Some critics point to a disconnect between optimistic AI growth projections and current economic reality. An OpenAI IPO could force investors to price in substantial future expansion despite these uncertainties. Overall, the IPO race could serve as a broader stress test for whether the AI industry truly has a sustainable business model.
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, CNET editor-in-chief, journalist and pop culture junkie, is co-author of “Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s,” as well as “The Totally Sweet ’90s.” She has been a journalist since 1989 and works for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and NBC News Digital. She is part of Generation X in terms of date of birth, words and deeds. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line. See full bio