OpenAI Leans Toward 2027 IPO as SoftBank and AI Stocks Slide

OpenAI is leaning toward waiting until 2027 for its initial public offering, The New York Times said Thursday, citing three people involved in the company's deliberations. The shift follows a June 8 confidential S-1 filing and comes as advisers weigh Sam Altman's push for a $1 trillion valuation against a public market that has already marked down Elon Musk's SpaceX.

CNBC said Friday that OpenAI has not held pre-IPO meetings with investors to test pricing and demand, and has not set an official listing timeline. Those meetings are expected to start only after the company has a clearer date, people familiar with the plans told CNBC. OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC, and a company spokesperson declined further comment to the Times beyond OpenAI's earlier statement that timing had not been decided.

The June 8 filing left OpenAI with the option to go public without committing to a date. OpenAI said that day that it had submitted the S-1 because it expected the filing to leak, adding that "it may be a while" because some work would be easier while the company stays private. Altman told CNBC earlier this month that going public is "a financing event" and that OpenAI would do it when it made sense.

Advisers gave OpenAI executives a choice between waiting until 2027 to seek a $1 trillion public valuation or listing sooner at a lower price, according to the Times. Altman told one person in contact with him that changing the trillion-dollar target was a nonstarter. CNBC has put OpenAI's March valuation at $852 billion after a funding round that raised $122 billion and opened part of the deal to individual investors through bank channels.

Advisers pointed to SpaceX's trading as the cautionary example, according to the Times. SpaceX raised more than $85 billion this month and reached a $1.77 trillion debut valuation, then fell to $153 by Thursday after trading as high as $202 last week, the Times said. Yahoo Finance said Friday that SpaceX had fallen back near its opening price after a first-day surge; it also said the OpenAI delay report paused a brief rally in memory stocks and broader AI-linked shares.

Public-market proxies reacted before OpenAI shares were available. SoftBank Group fell more than 12% Friday after the Times report, Quartz said. The Japanese investor's OpenAI commitment is expected to reach about $65 billion by October. Quartz said SoftBank's Vision Fund had recorded about $46 billion of investment gains in the year through March 31, driven largely by the rising fair value of its OpenAI stake. Hiroki Takei, a Resona Holdings strategist, told Bloomberg that a listed OpenAI would give public investors a benchmark for one of SoftBank's largest private positions. "News of an IPO delay naturally dampens those expectations," he said.

Reuters, via Yahoo Finance, said Kioxia, the Japanese memory-chip maker, slid 12% Friday as AI-related shares sold off. Kioxia had benefited from AI infrastructure spending and had become the most valuable company in the Nikkei 225, Reuters said. The company is separately considering a stock split and a U.S. listing of American depositary shares in the next financial year.

CNBC said Kalshi traders now price an OpenAI IPO announcement as more likely in early 2027. Traders now price a 59% chance that OpenAI formally announces an IPO by March 1, 2027, and a 73% chance by June 2027. Only about one in three contracts pointed to an announcement before Jan. 1. Kalshi resolves the contract when the SEC declares an S-1 effective, the IPO prices, or the company receives a ticker.

Anthropic may now reach public investors first. Bloomberg said Friday that OpenAI's leadership expects Anthropic to go public ahead of it, even though both companies have filed confidentially with U.S. regulators. Anthropic filed on June 1 and has considered an October IPO, Bloomberg has said. Its latest funding round valued the Claude maker at $965 billion, above OpenAI's March valuation, and the two companies were already being compared in OpenAI's filing plan.

A later listing leaves OpenAI's capital requirements in place. The Times, citing one person, put OpenAI's 2025 revenue at roughly $13 billion; OpenAI has said it is now producing $2 billion a month. It is also spending heavily on data centers, recruiting and enterprise sales while ChatGPT's consumer usage hovers around 900 million weekly users, according to the Times and CNBC. Public investors would eventually see those numbers in an S-1. As of Friday, the next disclosure is still private, and the market is pricing the IPO through SoftBank, memory stocks and the SpaceX chart.

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Marcus Schuler

San Francisco

Editor-in-Chief and founder of Implicator.ai. Former ARD correspondent and senior broadcast journalist with 10+ years covering tech. Writes daily briefings on policy and market developments. Based in San Francisco. E-mail: editor@implicator.ai