OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering as early as September, according to the Wall Street Journal, one day after a federal court dismissed Elon Musk’s lawsuit challenging the company’s corporate structure, leadership, and finances.
TechCrunch reported Wednesday that CEO Sam Altman hopes OpenAI will be ready to go public by September. The company has retained Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of the dominant underwriters in tech IPOs, and may file confidential paperwork with the SEC within days or weeks, per the Journal.
The lawsuit’s dismissal removed the most significant procedural obstacle to OpenAI’s ongoing conversion from a nonprofit-controlled structure to a for-profit public benefit corporation. That structural change had been contested in court and, before the dismissal, represented a genuine governance risk any prospective public investor would have had to price. With the case gone, the conversion can proceed, clearing the path to a public float.
The IPO timing lands in an unusual week for AI company finances. Anthropic disclosed that it crossed $10.9 billion in annualized revenue in the second quarter of 2026, its first publicly profitable quarter. The contrast matters for OpenAI’s roadshow: Anthropic’s Q2 result gives public-market investors a comparable, and Anthropic’s profitability will be the baseline any analyst uses to question OpenAI’s path to margin.
OpenAI’s own cost structure complicates the valuation math. The company is committed to a $300 billion compute partnership with Oracle, a figure that, annualized across the likely life of the contract, represents a structural cash drain that will appear on any S-1. Private investors valued OpenAI at $300 billion in its last round. Whether public markets accept that number, or apply a discount for the compute burden, depends on the revenue trajectory Altman presents to underwriters.
TechCrunch notes that SpaceX, which absorbed xAI (Musk’s AI lab), is expected to file its own IPO paperwork as early as this week. That sets up a direct comparison trade: two AI-adjacent companies, both founder-driven, both with contested governance histories, competing for the same capital allocation window.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment at the time of TechCrunch’s report.
For sponsors and enterprise customers currently negotiating multi-year agreements with OpenAI, a September IPO filing introduces a pricing floor: any contract signed before or shortly after the S-1 drops will be referenced in analyst models, and OpenAI’s sales team will have every incentive to show high contract values in the run-up to the offering. Teams with renewal windows in Q3 2026 should accelerate those negotiations now, before the IPO dynamic shifts OpenAI’s commercial posture.
Reported by TechCrunch on 2026-05-20.
