OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands meeting on August 19 that “we will be a public company in 2027,” or sooner if growth continues to “inflect,” according to CNBC’s reporting, the company’s first explicit public timeline for going public. The remarks follow a confidential S-1 registration OpenAI filed with the SEC in June.
What Friar told staff
“The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise,” Friar said, per CNBC. “We raised $122 billion in March, and that gives us flexibility.” OpenAI’s valuation stood at $852 billion after that March raise.
A confidential S-1 filing, as opposed to a public one, lets a company keep its financial details private while it works through SEC review, giving OpenAI room to adjust its timing as the business evolves before a formal public filing locks in a schedule.
The numbers behind the timing
OpenAI’s second-quarter revenue reached $6.7 billion, up 18% from the first quarter, with its annualized revenue run rate recently passing $40 billion, a 35% quarterly growth rate that CNBC reports climbed to 50% within OpenAI’s enterprise segment specifically. The company’s operating loss also widened, to $12.3 billion in the second quarter from $9.3 billion in the first.
Racing Anthropic, or not
Friar was also asked about rival Anthropic, which could go public as soon as September, after Anthropic told investors its own annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion in July, a figure that overtook OpenAI’s on that specific metric. “We are running our own race,” Friar said.
The comment comes after a stretch of executive turnover at OpenAI: revenue chief Denise Dresser left after eight months, longtime executive Brad Lightcap is departing to start a new venture, and Fidji Simo stepped down from her product role in July for health reasons, according to CNBC’s reporting.
Why it matters
A 2027 target with an explicit “or sooner” caveat is a company trying to signal confidence without locking itself into a date it might miss if growth cools, which looks like the more likely reason for the hedge than genuine uncertainty about direction. Pairing that timeline with Friar’s “our own race” line about Anthropic also reads as an attempt to get ahead of the comparison before reporters draw it for her, especially with OpenAI having just paused training on its Astra model over safety concerns days earlier, a data point that could complicate a growth story if it slows product releases.
The widening operating loss alongside accelerating revenue is the more interesting tension to watch than the IPO date itself: a 35% quarterly run-rate growth number is genuinely strong, but it arrives next to a loss that grew faster than revenue did, and public-market investors will likely scrutinize that gap far more closely than a private funding round ever would.
What to watch: whether OpenAI converts its confidential S-1 to a public filing before Anthropic does, and whether the operating loss narrows as the IPO timeline gets closer.
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