OpenAI files for IPO amid $38.5B annual losses

What happened

OpenAI filed preliminary confidential paperwork with the SEC this month, setting the stage for an imminent IPO. The company said it filed because it expected the information to leak, and noted that timing has not been decided yet. This follows OpenAI's October 2025 restructuring that converted it from a nonprofit into a for-profit entity, giving the nonprofit controlling the company a $130 billion（約21兆円） stake and reducing Microsoft's stake to 27%.

Why it matters

OpenAI is hemorrhaging money—it posted $38.5 billion（約6.2兆円） in net losses for the 2025 calendar year and an additional $3.7 billion（約5900億円） in the first three months of 2026—while facing intense competition from rivals like Google, DeepSeek, and Anthropic (which announced its own fall IPO plans). An IPO would allow OpenAI to raise the billions of dollars it needs to sustain its research and development efforts. Sam Altman acknowledged that going public would let public markets participate in value creation, though he also noted that operating as a private company has advantages.

What to watch

The filing comes as SpaceX completed its first week on the public stock market with a market capitalization above $2.5 trillion（約400兆円）, surpassing Amazon. OpenAI faces ongoing competitive pressure—Altman declared a "code red" last year after Google's rapid Gemini 3 deployment, and expects such focused efforts to occur once or twice a year as the company works to maintain distance from competitors.