OpenAI, the company behind popular chatbot ChatGPT, has become the latest artificial intelligence (AI) giant to reveal plans to sell shares to the public through a stock listing.
Its decision had been expected for months, but the company’s announcement comes exactly one week after rival AI firm Anthropic said it was planning to go public, too.
OpenAI said on Monday it had made a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) at some point in the future.
Its plans are the latest in a wave of heavy-weight IPOs, alongside Anthropic and billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, which is set to debut on the Nasdaq on Friday.
SpaceX is targeting a share price which would value the company at $1.75tn (£1.3tn).
Announcing its IPO plans on Monday, OpenAI said: “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company.”
The three firms all have a “vast need for cash”, said Sunil Krishnan from Aviva Investors, and “no-one wants to be last” in the game to go public, he told the BBC’s Today programme.
He said that the firms are making huge investments in their AI infrastructure including on chips, and training their AI models, which all come at massive expense.
OpenAI and Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot Claude, are focused on AI work and have been fierce rivals essentially since Dario Amodei co-founded the latter company five years ago.
He did so after leaving OpenAI over disagreements with Sam Altman, the co-founder and chief executive of OpenAI.
Today, the companies compete for users, corporate customers, investors, and have in recent months been jockeying with private valuations inching toward $1tn.
OpenAI’s most recent valuation from private investors came in at $852bn. Anthropic’s most recent valuation hit $965bn.