OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees during an all-hands meeting on Wednesday that the AI lab "will be a public company in 2027," but that it could debut sooner if "our business continues to inflect"1,2.
"The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise," Friar told employees, according to two sources familiar with her comments who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. "We raised $122 billion in March, and that gives us flexibility".
OpenAI confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June. The company has not publicly disclosed when it plans to debut.
Friar addressed the competitive landscape directly, telling employees not to worry about rival Anthropic's IPO timeline. Anthropic has also confidentially filed its prospectus with regulators and has been holding early meetings to test the waters with potential investors. Friar said Anthropic could become public in September.
The disclosure comes as OpenAI faces pressure to justify its $852 billion valuation ahead of a public listing. Friar shared internal growth metrics: OpenAI's revenue run rate is up 35% quarter to date, and enterprise revenue run rate is up 50% quarter to date. The company's AI coding and work product has reached 20 million weekly active users.
OpenAI told investors it generated $6.7 billion in revenue for the second quarter, up 18% from the first quarter. The company's annualized revenue run rate recently topped $40 billion.
Anthropic, meanwhile, reported an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion at the end of July — a sevenfold increase from a year ago — and shared a preliminary revenue figure of $11.5 billion for the second quarter.
The IPO timeline discussion also arrives amid a stretch of senior leadership departures at OpenAI. Revenue chief Denise Dresser left her role last week after eight months at the company. Brad Lightcap said he was ending an eight-year stint at OpenAI to start something new. Fidji Simo stepped down from her role in July to focus on recovery from chronic illness.
CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and Friar are among the remaining executives. Brockman said he does not think the executive turnover is "actually that atypical," adding that OpenAI is "so much in the spotlight that every departure gets scrutinized in a way it doesn't otherwise".
ANALYSIS Friar's framing of the IPO as "another fundraise" rather than a culmination signals that OpenAI views public markets primarily as a capital access mechanism — consistent with the scale of spending required to compete in frontier AI development. The explicit comparison to Anthropic's timeline and revenue figures, delivered to employees at an all-hands, suggests the two companies are now benchmarking against each other not only on model capability but on financial trajectory and public-market readiness.