OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the company at up to $1 trillion, potentially the largest public listing in history.

Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, OpenAI is best known for creating ChatGPT, the world’s most widely used AI chatbot. It has since evolved into a capped-profit structure that develops advanced models such as GPT-5 and DALL·E for language and image generation. Its stated mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity while maintaining safety and transparency in how AI systems are built and deployed.

The company may file with regulators as early as late 2026, though Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has suggested a 2027 listing is more likely. The move follows a corporate restructuring that reduced reliance on Microsoft, which holds a 27% stake, while granting the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation a 26% share of the for-profit arm. The IPO would enable OpenAI to raise capital more efficiently to fund Chief Executive Sam Altman’s multitrillion-dollar plans for global AI infrastructure, including data centers and custom chip manufacturing.

OpenAI remains loss-making as it invests heavily in training and deploying frontier models, with rising costs for chips, data, and energy. The broader AI industry faces similar pressures as companies such as Google, Meta, and Anthropic spend aggressively to gain an early lead. Supporters argue that profits will grow as models are commercialized across software, cloud, and enterprise tools, while critics warn of escalating compute costs, regulatory risks, and a crowded competitive field.

OpenAI’s annualized revenue is expected to reach $20 billion by the end of 2025, according to internal projections. Altman has described an IPO as: “the most likely path” to meet the company’s future capital needs.