OpenAI Is Heading for an IPO — and It Will Rewrite the Rules
OpenAI has passed $25 billion in annualized revenue and is reportedly taking early steps toward a public listing, potentially as soon as late 2026. The company is currently valued at $852 billion — not a typo. Rival Anthropic is approaching $19 billion in annualized revenue.
An OpenAI IPO would be unlike anything the public markets have processed in years. The valuation, the opacity of the business model, the nonprofit-to-capped-profit structure, and the political entanglement — Greg Brockman and other executives have donated heavily to Trump-aligned super PACs — all make this a strange animal for traditional equity analysis.
What’s notable is OpenAI’s parallel move into policy: the company released a framework for an “intelligence age” economy, proposing public wealth funds, robot taxes, portable worker benefits, and a four-day workweek. It reads like pre-IPO reputation management for a company aware that displacing millions of workers while going public needs some ideological cover.
The IPO will not make AI more transparent. It will make OpenAI’s shareholders richer and give the company a currency for acquisitions. That’s a different thing.