OpenAI confidentially files for US IPO at ~$852 billion valuation

OpenAI's confidential filing is a step toward gauging investor appetite for what could be one of the largest public listings ever. The company said that while remaining private has advantages, the filing preserves the option to go public sooner if beneficial. Reported monthly revenue of roughly $2 billion underpins the ~$852B valuation, and reporting from The Information indicates OpenAI is simultaneously preparing a new frontier model and expects to list within the next year.

The mechanics mirror Anthropic's S-1 eight days earlier, turning mid-2026 into a clustered AI public-market moment — analysts also expect Anthropic's prospectus to price in Q2. Both companies are racing to convert private mega-rounds into liquid public currency to fund compute commitments; OpenAI's Greg Brockman separately pointed users to spend Oracle cloud commitments on OpenAI products, underscoring the capex backdrop.

The development reframes a years-long debate: developers on HN questioned what dual OpenAI/Anthropic IPOs mean for open-source versus proprietary AI, and whether public-market scrutiny will force margin discipline as DeepSeek and others compress token prices. Watch for the eventual public S-1, which would expose OpenAI's true cost structure, Microsoft revenue-share terms, and the gap between headline revenue and inference spend.