OpenAI leans toward waiting until next year for IPO

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/technology/openai-ipo-artificial-intelligence.html

by mfiguiere • 27 days ago

179 119 27 days ago

nytimes.com

babelfish• 27 days ago

up from the company’s last private valuation of $730 million

typo

4k0hz• 27 days ago

For now.. ;)

cdrnsf• 27 days ago

The A.I. company’s advisers are pushing its chief executive, Sam Altman, to move slowly after SpaceX’s stock has been volatile and as the start-up grapples with financial challenges.

SpaceX's stock volatile? It's a shame nobody saw that coming.

echelon• 27 days ago

Is it still being prematurely included in the major index funds?

winfredJa• 27 days ago

yes, in few weeks.unfortunately the stock will be back from this slump

opinion-is-bad• 27 days ago

Only the Nasdaq, which is an intentionally aggressive index. The S&P rejected all proposals.

HerbManic• 27 days ago

Launched in the same way they launch Starship, full of ambition, promising a bit too much, but might explode at any moment. Either way it will be a spectacular show regardless of what happen.

scottyah3• 27 days ago

Yes, it's actually the first volatile high-profile IPO so you can see why some people need to be reminded of the possibility.

tough• 26 days ago

I didn't partake but from elon's shenanigans with bitcoin and doge (the coin, not the govt thing) it seemed clear he'd do similar with the stock

is tesla stock not volatile too? elon stock's are more like today's crypto than a 20th's century company stock w dividends

JumpCrisscross8• 27 days ago

shame nobody saw that coming

Seeing something coming is very different from having it not only confirmed but also quantified.

tim3332• 27 days ago

It's actually remained about 14% or more above the IPO price which is roughly what you'd want but gone up and down a bit.

It's funny with stock prices - they all go up and down a bit in kind of random ways but people project all sorts of stories onto them that often don't relate much to reality.

roxolotl• 27 days ago

It peaked at around +60% from IPO price and swung daily around 10-15%. It’s possible it’s starting to stabilize but that first week was basically the definition of volatile.

ambicapter2• 26 days ago

Just googling the ticker shows it at 149, which is below its opening.

dminik3• 27 days ago

The A.I. company’s advisers are pushing its chief executive, Sam Altman, to move slowly after SpaceX’s stock has been volatile and as the start-up grapples with financial challenges.

Surely if your company isn't just blowing smoke then you have nothing to worry about. Or is this an admission that the insane valuation for these companies is currently just bullshit?

JumpCrisscross8• 27 days ago

if your company isn't just blowing smoke then you have nothing to worry about

Not really. Plenty of solid companies have to wring their hands around IPO timing based on market conditions. Sometimes, this is due to valuation multiples. Sometimes it's due to fads, e.g. investors preferring capital-structure efficiency versus low leverage.

dminik3• 27 days ago

I mean, my comment wasn't necessarily meant to be some insightful analysis. But I do find it weird that OpenAI has seemingly gone from racing Anthropic to "maybe in 6 months" in the span of a week.

koolala4• 27 days ago

Maybe they want a Mythos level model first.

wmf2• 27 days ago

Good news: GPT-5.6 has been export restricted.

koolala4• 27 days ago

Where are the anecdotes about it hacking the NSA though?

tristanj• 27 days ago

This is patently false, don't spread rumors. Voluntarily delaying release at the request of the government is not the same as imposing export controls.

cmiles84• 27 days ago

The window has basically closed for them for the time being. The business math just isn’t there.

The best option at this point is kick the can down the road and hope market sentiment improves next year. Not much signal that it will, and quite a lot of signal the sentiment only declines, but pumping the brakes is the least worst option on the table.

JumpCrisscross8• 27 days ago

window has basically closed for them for the time being. The business math just isn’t there

Unless Anthropic also cancels its IPO, this probably isn't it.

cmiles84• 27 days ago

The math doesn’t help Anthropic either but the market views these two companies very differently at the moment. Anthropic is seen as having momentum. Open AI is seen as having likely peaked. That makes a huge difference when pitching an IPO.

arppacket• 27 days ago

I doubt that anyone at OpenAI would let their payday decrease. If anything, they got assurances that everyone would keep the bubble going until 2028 no matter what.

bellowsgulch2• 26 days ago

The business math just isn’t there.

What do you mean? I promise I'm not being facetious or satirical. I'm just too simple and conservative of an investor to understand this comment. (for example: Is the price-to-earnings ratio too high? I probably wouldn't want to invest in the business.)

lennessy• 26 days ago

They are losing too much money. With open source options that are always close to frontier performance it will always be hard for them reduce training costs and charge premium rates.

sschueller• 26 days ago

There may never be another window. They will run out of money especially if open models catch up.

pier25• 26 days ago

They should have done it a year or two ago when the hype was strong.

Today everyone knows there's no agi coming up and it will be a very long time until they generate any profits, if ever.

sharadov• 27 days ago

I was really hoping that they Ipoed this year, so we can see their stock shoot up and down in flames, and we're really done with them and Sam Altman, once and for all.

fragmede• 27 days ago

While spcx has room to go up or down from where it is today, the reality is it that didn't drop like a rock on IPO day, so wall street bets vibes-based online "analysis" investing is only good for paper money.

outside12342• 27 days ago

The investment bankers were in there manipulating, but that's over, and gravity is here.

dgellow2• 27 days ago

After the IPO Altman will be even more insanely rich, and that time in a more liquid manner. I don’t think he will go away

michelb• 25 days ago

Why would Sam go? He has the political power of this administration on his side. Far more than Elon, who is working hard to get it back through SpaceX military contracts. Anthropic has very little political sway, which is why they are in trouble now. OpenAI might wait to see if this government will destroy Anthropic’s chances in the USA. Then Sam could become the only player.

int32_64• 27 days ago

AI exits in America probably have a political cliff approaching fast as populist backlash will hit them, or perhaps they see political winds favorable to regulatory capture in the future and are waiting for that?

JumpCrisscross8• 27 days ago

AI exits in America probably have a political cliff approaching fast as populist backlash will hit them

The populist backlash is coming for datacenters. I'm unconvinced that's truly problematic to these companies given data travels close to the speed of light and plenty of countries have energy, data interconnects and governments unresponsive to locals' concerns.

kridsdale1• 26 days ago

This morning I heard a convincing argument that the data center backlash is only really significant in the USA because jobs here equal health care access. Europeans can afford to be less threatened existentially.

strangattractor• 26 days ago

Data centers are the next Dark Fiber from 2000. After VCs and private Equity fund them there will not be sufficient demand because AI will inevitably not entirely live up to all the hype. The fire sale will eventually begin. Then Google, M$, Apple and Amazon will buy them at a discount just like Google snatched up the dark fiber after 2000.

ezst• 25 days ago

Only worse: internet infrastructure (routers, fiber, ...) depreciates over multiple decades, not mere months. What's inside those data centers matters more than them being built: today's cutting edge inference chips or GPUs may not be so useful if either hardware or models evolve in the slightest, and in some way, we should hope for that if we want to be optimistic about the future of AI/LLMs.

saati• 25 days ago

Fiber is good for a hundred years, nothing in a data center will last ten.

sourcegrift• 27 days ago

It's over. Open models and chinese models will make fast progress and that nvidia+ms 128gb monster is what everyone will end up buying. sama can go back to running scams.

outside12342• 27 days ago

OpenAI is in deep trouble is what I am reading into this

luisgvv• 26 days ago

Why?

combilabs• 26 days ago

I actually see this as an indicator that they still feel they can comfortably raise in the private market. If they tried to rush an IPO into an indifferent public market it would look worse, in my opinion. I'm not saying they're in great shape--they may be in terrible shape for all I know. But I think rushing the IPO would send a worse message than holding off.

albatross79• 27 days ago

Bad idea, the AI hype train still has some gas, when it settles in that it's just another tool it's all going to fizzle out.

therobots9274• 27 days ago

I can’t wait. It’s gonna be an absolute blast to watch.

tempodox• 27 days ago

They just want to see Anthropic crash first and then be the last survivor.

flowerthoughts• 27 days ago

If Anthropic tanks in the public markets, that will cause a revaluation of OpenAI in the private markets. If they delay IPO to try another private round, they also want to sign that round early.

Perhaps that's Anthropic's plan, is they believe OpenAI is weak. If the IPO is good they win. If it's bad OpenAI loses.

bob1029• 26 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Second-m...

fsuts2• 26 days ago

SpaceX moved first so it’s 3rd move advantage?

lelanthran4• 26 days ago

They just want to see Anthropic crash first and then be the last survivor.

I don't think so. There's only two real options here:

1. There's no bubble to pop

2. There's a bubble to pop

In the first case, the first AI company to IPO gets a ton of money from the market who wants to get in on this, and the second to IPO finds that there's not enough capital left in the public markets and has to sell for less than they'd wanted to.

In the second case, the fir5st to IPO gets money from their shares, which drop in value (bubble popping), adn the second to IPO gets absolutely nothing (bubble popped).

In both cases, the first to IPO gets the rewards, the second gets either less or nothing.

jerojero• 26 days ago

The first ai IPO is spaceX.

Its already not anthropic or openAI.

But there might still be some water in the well for the second one, there definitely won't be for the third one.

draginol• 26 days ago

With all the uncertainty about AI regulation, I don't think now is the time.

How do you even value a company when we don't even know if GPT-6 will be made available to the general public?

hnarn• 26 days ago

I’m not so sure the uncertainty around _regulation_ is the concern here.

MichaelDickens• 26 days ago

OpenAI and Anthropic valuations are based on the premise that they may develop AGI in the near future. How do you value a company based on that premise? Throwing regulations into the mix doesn't make the problem much harder than it already is.

fsuts2• 26 days ago

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” as the saying goes.

Maybe they will show major Ad revenue and Codex sales and get a higher price next year but it’s a risk.

Havoc3• 26 days ago

They realised their numbers are much worse than anthropics

therobots9274• 26 days ago

You know anthropics numbers? They still haven’t filed either.

Havoc3• 26 days ago

They said they’re profitable on operating profit.

Think it’s pretty safe to assume theirs are less of a dumpster fire

light_triad• 26 days ago

Part of the issue is the respective positioning:

- OpenAI wants to be the consumer version of AI, modeled after Google and Meta, with a mostly free universal service powered by ads and e-commerce. They haven't fully shown that model can work. The big problem is the lack of zero marginal costs as each new user requires GPU spend.

- Anthropic positions itself more as enterprise AI, modeled after Microsoft ironically enough, and charges big companies for services. The economics of coding agents work but GPUs get expensive fast and open models are getting good enough for most use cases.

So it's a race between ads and e-commerce offsetting AI spend and open source eating almost everyone's lunch.

aurareturn• 26 days ago

Even open source models need hardware and energy to inference. Therefore, anyone offering a free ChatGPT competitor will be using the same unit economics.

My bet is that OpenAI will make free ChatGPT work through ads.

pastamania• 25 days ago

It's a very open question whether the economics for ads work though. Ads aren't just an infinite money pit you can just reach into, they have a price ceiling you have to stay under before they stop making sense for the advertiser. And if some of the rumours about OpenAI's ad CPMs are true, the inventory is going to be massively expensive.

It makes sense for it to be expensive, mind. The unit cost of serving an LLM response is so much higher than the unit cost of serving a bunch of Instagram posts, or traditional search results or whatever.

But price too highly, most advertisers won't be able to justify them. Why spend $60 for what you can buy from Meta for $6? It's a brave media buyer who runs with that as a long term strategy. But if you don't price highly, you're just offsetting some of the losses. The whole reason Google, Meta et all's ad networks exploded what because they cost less to get reach than traditional media did before, which opened them up to a bazillion small businesses who otherwise didn't have the capital to get off the ground through traditional media. ChatGPT's will cost more than what's available now. Massively more. There's not a lot of history of that working out!

They'll get some buyers for a little while, the $60 vs $6 equation balances out if the ads are 10x more effective, and companies will throw a bit of money into campaigns to get a feel for how well they perform.

(Google is in a different position, they make basically near infinite margin on other ad types and can lump budgets in together to get still-attractive blended CPMs. It's a hit, but it's worth taking to protect their wider network, just like they did for years when Youtube wasn't remotely profitable.)

OpenAI leans toward waiting until next year for IPO

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