OpenAI is worth over $850 billion. But it still loses money, and now it wants to sell stock to the public.
On Monday, OpenAI said it filed a confidential S-1. That is the first set of money papers a firm files before it sells stock.
The filing went to the SEC. That is the agency that keeps an eye on the market.
A secret filing is like a dress rehearsal. It lets a firm show its books in private first.
The money chief, Sarah Friar, hinted at this back in April. She said a firm this big should act like a public one.
OpenAI even said it expects the news to leak. So it chose to share the move itself.
OpenAI says nothing is set yet. It has not picked a date, and going public could still be far off.
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OpenAI is not moving alone. Anthropic filed its own secret papers a week earlier.
And Elon Musk's SpaceX starts trading on the Nasdaq on Friday. SpaceX's filing named OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as top AI rivals.
Now all three want cash from the same investors. That is a lot of money chasing the same pockets.
The math explains the rush. OpenAI has raised over $180 billion, and it still spends fast on chips and data centers.
Anthropic just did something OpenAI has not. It raised money at a higher price, $965 billion to OpenAI's $852 billion.
OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. They sit at the top of SpaceX's filing too.
Like many startups that stay a private company, OpenAI will let staff sell some shares now. That eases the push to cash out.
Timing is the big question. If SpaceX does well, OpenAI and Anthropic may rush to beat each other.
ChatGPT put OpenAI on the map back in 2022. It now has more than 900 million weekly users.
CEO Sam Altman calls this the firm's "third phase." He says the world is starting to reshape around AI.
The race comes right after a court fight between Musk and Altman ended. A jury said Musk waited too long to sue.
OpenAI also shut its video app, Sora, to stay focused. It is pouring money into Codex, its coding tool that fights Anthropic's Claude Code.
OpenAI may also stay private for a while. Some of its plans are easier that way.
Still, the filing gives it the choice to move fast. The paperwork is in, but the date is not.
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