OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar has told the employees during a recent all-hands meeting that the ChatGPT-maker “will be a public company in 2027,” though the debut could come sooner if business momentum continues, as reported by CNBC. “The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise,” she said, noting that OpenAI raised $122 billion in March, giving it flexibility. Friar addressed concerns about competitor Anthropic, which has also confidentially filed for an IPO. She told employees not to worry if Anthropic goes public first. “There is a chance they pull the cover off that confidential file in the coming weeks and become public in September. That’s OK, we are running our own race,” she said, according to sources.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar characterised the IPO not as an end point but as another step
Friar characterized the IPO not as an end point but as another step in the company’s fundraising journey, telling employees, according to the sources, that the IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone. She pointed to the $122 billion OpenAI raised in March as a source of continued flexibility for the company going forward.OpenAI confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June but has not publicly disclosed a specific debut date. Its chief rival, Anthropic, has also confidentially filed its own prospectus with regulators and has reportedly been holding early meetings to gauge interest from potential investors.
Addressing the Anthropic question directly
Friar used part of the meeting to get ahead of employee concerns that Anthropic might beat OpenAI to the public markets. She told staff that both companies are currently under confidential filing, and that there’s a real chance Anthropic could make its filing public in the coming weeks and complete its debut as early as September. According to the sources, Friar told employees that would be fine, since OpenAI is focused on running its own race rather than measuring itself against Anthropic’s timeline.
OpenAI’s financial performance
OpenAI is under pressure to justify its $852 billion valuation ahead of a public listing, with investors pushing for more visibility into the company’s financials. During the all-hands meeting, Friar shared slides showing that OpenAI’s revenue run rate is up 35% quarter to date, its enterprise revenue run rate is up 50% quarter to date, and that its AI coding and work product tools have reached 20 million weekly active users.Separately, OpenAI told investors it generated $6.7 billion in revenue in the second quarter, up 18% from the first quarter, according to a Wall Street Journal report published later Wednesday. The company’s annualized revenue run rate has recently topped $40 billion.Anthropic, meanwhile, told its own investors over the weekend that its annualized revenue run rate reached $65 billion by the end of July, a sevenfold increase from a year earlier, alongside a preliminary second-quarter revenue figure of $11.5 billion.
Turnover in the executive ranks
Friar’s remarks come after a stretch of executive departures at OpenAI that have reportedly left some of the company’s financial backers uneasy about potential instability at the top. Revenue chief Denise Dresser left her role last week after just eight months at the company, two days after longtime executive Brad Lightcap announced he was ending an eight-year run at OpenAI to pursue a new venture. In July, product and business chief Fidji Simo stepped down from her role to focus on recovering from a chronic illness.With that turnover in the background, remaining leaders, including Friar, CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, now face the task of projecting stability to investors already navigating concerns about rising competition, the growing adoption of cheaper open-weight AI models, and the volatile stock performance of SpaceX in its first two months as a public company.