ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has taken the first step toward going public, one week after arch-rival Anthropic announced its own filing, as both companies look to raise the massive sums needed to expand.
In a social media post on Monday, the Sam Altman-led company said it had submitted an S-1 registration statement to US securities regulators for a potential debut.
OpenAI’s move follows a filing by Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, which announced last Monday that it had taken the same step.
“It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” OpenAI said, while noting the filing gives it “the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
Going public, known as an IPO, or initial public offering, means ordinary investors can buy a slice of a company for the first time. It is also one of the biggest ways a company can raise money fast.
Founded in San Francisco in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab by Altman, Elon Musk and others, OpenAI burst into the mainstream with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.
The company has since restructured as a for-profit corporation and has grown into one of the world’s most valuable private companies.
Training and running cutting-edge AI models require billions of dollars in computing infrastructure, and both OpenAI and Anthropic have been spending heavily to secure data center capacity and chips amid fierce competition to lead the industry.
