OpenAI has crossed $25 billion in annualized revenue and is reportedly taking early steps toward a public listing — potentially before the end of 2026.

Anthropic is not far behind, approaching $19 billion in annualized revenue. Both numbers represent growth that would have seemed implausible two years ago.

For context: OpenAI’s revenue in 2023 was around $1.6 billion. The AI model market has compressed a decade of typical SaaS scaling into about 24 months. That’s not organic enterprise adoption — it’s a platform shift, and the numbers are reflecting that.

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.

OpenAI has acquired a niche talk show popular with Silicon Valley insiders, in what is being described as an effort to shape the public narrative around artificial intelligence. The show has a dedicated audience among tech executives, venture capitalists, and AI researchers — exactly the people whose opinions get amplified into broader media coverage and policy circles.

The move is transparent in a way that’s almost refreshing. OpenAI is not pretending this is about content or entertainment. It is buying access to an influential microphone in the community that matters most to its regulatory and cultural future.

Strip away the personal animosity and the lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI is a fight about something that will define the AI industry for a decade: can a nonprofit that controls a powerful technology convert itself into a for-profit without betraying its founding mission?

Musk’s core legal argument is that he donated money and resources to OpenAI on the explicit basis that it was a nonprofit pursuing AI for humanity’s benefit. The conversion to a capped-profit structure — and the ongoing push toward a full for-profit entity — violates those terms, he argues. OpenAI counters that the mission has not changed, only the structure needed to raise the capital required to remain competitive.