OpenAI IPO date: 2027 still the plan, but its $30bn raise shrank

There is no official OpenAI IPO date yet, only a target year. Friar’s line to staff was direct: the company will be public in 2027, and it may go earlier if growth continues to bend upward. She also described the listing as a stop along the way rather than the end goal, calling it “another fundraise”.

Sam Altman has been more cautious in public. Earlier this fall the OpenAI CEO said the company would not go public in 2026, and he later tied the timing to getting its AI models to behave reliably. So the realistic window is 2027, with “early next year” the most optimistic version of that plan.

Nothing changes until OpenAI files paperwork with US regulators. That filing would be public, and it would reveal audited revenue, losses and risks for the first time. Until then, every date you see is a plan or a report, not a schedule.

The fundraising story moved fast over a single week. OpenAI first pitched investors on $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, then trimmed the valuation to $1.25 trillion. On Friday the Financial Times reported a $10bn cut to the target. CNBC confirmed the new goal on Saturday, citing a person close to the deal, who stressed that the round is still open and the numbers could move.

• Original goal: $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation.
• New goal: up to $20 billion at about $1.25 trillion after the new money.
• Secured so far: about $11 billion, according to the Journal, which described interest from some big investors as “tepid”.
• Deadline: OpenAI asked investors to commit by Friday, and some lowered what they had promised, the FT reported.

The FT expects the first close to come in below $20 billion. OpenAI has told shareholders it hopes to raise more in the coming weeks, this time by courting family offices and very wealthy individuals, with a later offering for them at the same valuation. OpenAI did not immediately comment on the reports.

Gulf money is expected to lead. The FT reported that MGX, a fund backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates, and other UAE investors are likely to put in the most. Familiar Silicon Valley and Japanese names are also lined up to join, among them Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and SoftBank.

Earlier reports said OpenAI wanted the cash to keep building computing infrastructure, the giant data centers that train and run models like the ones behind ChatGPT. That’s the part to watch. A company spending this heavily on chips and power needs a steady flow of fresh capital, and a public listing is the biggest source of it.

Timing did OpenAI no favors. The round closed out a rough stretch for AI stocks. Alphabet’s shares fell 12% on Thursday after its results, and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 3.5% in one Friday session as worries about AI spending spread. When public tech stocks wobble, private investors start asking harder questions about the price they’re paying.

Still, keep the scale in view. OpenAI was valued at $500 billion in October 2025. A March 2026 round then raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation after the money came in. Even the trimmed $1.25 trillion figure is a big step up from that, and the company’s revenue reportedly reached an annualized pace of about $50 billion by late September 2026. What shrank is the appetite, not the business.

OpenAI’s biggest rival may go first, and that matters more than it sounds. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, made its IPO filing public on Monday. The FT reported that it aims to list this month, and that it wants to be worth no less than $1.5tn when it does. Anthropic has been valued above OpenAI since May.

Whichever lab lists first effectively sets the yardstick for the other. If Anthropic’s shares trade well, OpenAI can point to them and argue for a richer price. If they slump, the case for rushing OpenAI to market in early 2027 gets weaker. Analysts had once floated a $2 trillion value for Anthropic’s debut before trimming expectations, which shows how quickly these numbers can swing.

If you use ChatGPT, nothing in these reports points to a change in the app, its free tier or its paid plans. The funding fight is about how fast OpenAI can keep building data centers, not about what you pay this month. Over time, though, a company under pressure to justify a trillion-dollar price tag tends to push harder on paid plans, business deals and new revenue lines.

If you hoped to buy OpenAI shares, you can’t yet. The company is private, and the upcoming offering for wealthy individuals is aimed at the very rich, not everyday brokerage accounts. When an IPO does happen, shares would trade on a public exchange and be open to anyone with a regular brokerage account in the US, and through many brokers in the UK and Canada. Be wary of anything sold as “pre-IPO OpenAI stock” before then.

A few practical tips while you wait:

• Watch Anthropic’s debut this month. Its first weeks of trading are the best clue to how OpenAI will be priced.
• Look for a public filing with US regulators. That document, not a headline, will carry the real OpenAI IPO date and the first audited numbers.
• Treat every reported figure as provisional. The round is still open, and the person who confirmed the new target said the numbers could change.