OpenAI Targets 2027 IPO as Anthropic Rivalry Escalates

OpenAI Sets a Public Timeline

OpenAI has told employees it intends to go public by 2027, with Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar signaling the offering could arrive sooner if the company's growth trajectory continues to accelerate 15. The disclosure, reportedly made to staff on a Wednesday internal call, marks one of the clearest timelines OpenAI has given for an eventual listing, transforming years of speculation about the ChatGPT maker's public-market ambitions into a concrete target date 5.

A Broader Race Among AI Labs

OpenAI is not alone in weighing a stock-market debut. Rival lab Anthropic is also positioning itself for a potential IPO, with reports suggesting its offering could eventually surpass the record recently set by Elon Musk's SpaceX in terms of scale or valuation ambition 2. Anthropic's IPO planning reportedly includes a structural feature common among tech founders wary of losing control after going public: granting co-founders shares carrying extra voting power, a mechanism designed to preserve decision-making authority even after outside investors buy in 4. Taken together, the OpenAI and Anthropic reports frame the two leading generative-AI companies as effectively racing each other toward public markets, a dynamic one outlet explicitly described as a heating-up battle between the two firms 5.

Not Every AI-Adjacent Firm Is Rushing In

The enthusiasm for public listings is not universal across the broader tech-and-crypto landscape that intersects with AI infrastructure and fintech. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse struck a notably more cautious tone, describing his company as "more neutral" on pursuing an IPO even as Ripple pursues an ambitious internal goal of $1 billion in annualized revenue by 2026 3. That contrast underscores that, while OpenAI and Anthropic appear to be treating a public offering as a near-term inevitability, other well-capitalized private companies see no urgent need to tap public markets despite strong growth targets of their own.

Why It Matters

An OpenAI IPO would be a landmark event for both the technology and financial sectors, given the company's outsized valuation and its central role in the generative-AI boom. A public listing would subject OpenAI to new disclosure requirements and investor scrutiny, potentially reshaping how it balances its unusual capped-profit corporate structure with shareholder expectations. The parallel moves by Anthropic — including the reported super-voting share structure — suggest that AI labs are studying how to raise massive public capital while insulating founders from the loss of control that often accompanies going public. Together, these developments signal that 2026 and 2027 could become pivotal years for AI-sector public offerings, testing investor appetite for companies whose valuations have so far been set almost entirely in private markets.