THE NEW YORK TIMES: Maker of ChatGPT chatbot, OpenAI, prepares to file to go public in coming weeks

OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, is preparing to file confidentially for an initial public offering in the coming weeks, two people with knowledge of the matter said, laying the groundwork for one of the largest artificial intelligence company offerings that would heighten the stakes of the technology race.

OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to prepare the paperwork, said the people, who were not authorised to speak publicly about private discussions. OpenAI is closely watching the stock market, they added, and the timing of any filing remains in flux. If a filing comes soon, an IPO could take place as soon as September.

“As part of normal governance, we regularly evaluate a range of strategic options,” a spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement. “Our focus remains on execution.”

OpenAI is one of the most highly anticipated potential public offering candidates this year, in what is set to be a lucrative string of tech company offerings.

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company that has valued itself at more than $US1 trillion ($AUD1.4tr), is on the runway to reach the stock market as early as next month.

And Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s fiercest rivals that is raising money at a $US900 billion valuation, has also taken steps to go public.

OpenAI, which is based in San Francisco, was valued at $US730b ($AUD1.02trin the private market after a funding round this year, not including the latest investment.

An IPO boom would probably unleash a flood of generational wealth, creating the world’s first trillionaires and cementing the riches of a set of Silicon Valley tech executives who are already billionaires. It would also bring a bonanza to AI company employees, as well as to Wall Street banks and others.

The AI companies could reach the stock market even as the technology they built has generated an intense backlash. Communities around the world are pushing back against AI data centres being constructed in their backyards.

In the US, a growing national movement of parent groups, religious leaders, environmentalists and former Tea Party activists is also resisting AI, a technology that many fear could harm their jobs, national security, the environment and people’s mental health.

OpenAI overcame a significant hurdle Monday on the way to a possible IPO when a Federal judge and jury rejected a lawsuit from Musk that aimed to unravel the for-profit company that OpenAI created last year.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on OpenAI’s IPO plans. (The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

OpenAI, which is led by Sam Altman, its CEO, started the AI boom in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT. But it faces increasing competition from Anthropic and Google, which offer similar technologies.

After raising more than $US180b over its lifetime, the company remains a long way from being profitable.

OpenAI pulled in more than $US13b in revenue last year but expects to spend $US115b over the next four years. Revenue is rising from ads inside the consumer version of ChatGPT and as the company continues to sell its technologies to businesses and independent software developers.

ChatGPT has more than 900 million monthly users. But Tuesday at its annual developer conference, Google said its Gemini app now had 900 million active users. The tech giant, which also runs a cloud computing business and makes its own AI chips, has mounted a significant challenge to ChatGPT through its search engine, where it now offers similar AI technology.

At the same time, OpenAI faces a challenge in the business market from Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI employees.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently said his company had planned to grow about 10 times as big this year but had reached a growth rate that could make it 80 times as big this year. Much of that growth is from the company’s AI-based software coding product, Claude Code, which allows users to create complex programs without any coding experience.

Last month, Anthropic unveiled a new version of its technology, Mythos, and said the technology was too dangerous to be released publicly because it could be used to identify security vulnerabilities in the computer software that underpins the internet. It shared Mythos with a small group of tech companies and organisations.

OpenAI soon unveiled similar technology and took a different tack, sharing the technology with a much larger group and cybersecurity experts. It also upgraded its consumer chatbot with the technology.

Musk, Altman and a group of AI researchers founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit, vowing to build AI for the benefit of humanity. After a power struggle, Musk left the lab in 2018. Altman then attached the AI lab to a for-profit company and began raising billions of dollars from investors, including as Microsoft.

After the success of ChatGPT, Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, accusing them of abandoning the lab’s original mission by putting commercial gain over the public good. While Musk’s claims were rejected this week, he has said he would appeal the court’s decision.

The New York Times