Ultraman: Filing for IPO Does Not Mean Immediate Listing; Trading Only After Readiness

According to The Information, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman stated on Wednesday in an all-hands meeting that even if the company submits an initial public offering (IPO) prospectus, it does not mean that an immediate listing will follow, emphasizing that OpenAI will only enter the capital market when it is "ready."

Sources familiar with the matter revealed that Altman clearly differentiated between the concepts of "submitting listing documents" and "being ready to go public" during the meeting, cooling expectations about OpenAI's IPO timeline.

Previously, The Information reported that OpenAI was preparing to submit a prospectus to securities regulatory authorities in the coming weeks, and if the documents are submitted promptly, it could be listed as early as September this year—earlier than the fourth quarter or later timelines previously discussed within the company. Some major OpenAI investors were surprised by the company's readiness to submit the documents so quickly.

OpenAI is in a race to go public with its competitor Anthropic. Sources close to the matter say that Altman has privately expressed a wish to be the first to go public, while Anthropic could potentially complete its listing as early as October this year. Besides the financial performance of both companies, the market reaction to SpaceX's upcoming large-scale listing and global economic trends will have a key impact on the final timing for both entities to go public.

In terms of computing power expansion, Altman revealed in the all-hands meeting that OpenAI has recently added over 2 gigawatts of computing resources, surpassing the total scale of SpaceX's "Colossus" cluster. Altman also stated that he believes Anthropic is constrained by its computing capacity, while OpenAI is gearing up for strong performance in the coming months.

However, Anthropic has been actively signing computing power procurement agreements recently, including an agreement to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month to lease its Colossus data center capacity, indicating that this company, founded by former OpenAI researchers, is hastening to strengthen its computational shortcomings.

For both companies, one of the core uses of the funds raised in the IPO will be to pay for the increasingly high costs of large-scale computing power.