OpenAI IPO: what to know and how to buy shares

An OpenAI IPO is perhaps the world's most highly anticipated stock market launch, competing only with SpaceX — which listed in June 2026 — and ByteDance in terms of potential popularity. While highly speculative, retail investors too young to invest in the early days of the Magnificent Seven may consider an IPO a similarly valuable once-in-a-generation opportunity, to invest in a business that could eventually be worth trillions of dollars.

It's important to be clear from the outset: an IPO of this scale carries significant risk. OpenAI remains deeply loss-making, its valuation is stretched by any conventional measure, and the timeline has repeatedly shifted. This article is for information only and is not a recommendation to invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, and the value of any investment can fall as well as rise.

When could the OpenAI IPO take place?

OpenAI took its first formal step towards public markets on 8 June 2026, when it confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This came just one week after rival AI lab Anthropic filed its own confidential prospectus on 1 June 2026, underscoring the race between the two frontier AI companies to reach public markets. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters, with JPMorgan also involved.

However, filing confidentially is not the same as committing to a date. In the same statement, OpenAI cautioned that timing was undecided and that "it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company" — while framing the filing as preserving "the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."

By late June 2026, the picture had tilted towards patience. The New York Times reported on 25 June that OpenAI was leaning towards delaying its listing until 2027. According to that reporting, advisers presented executives with a stark choice: accept a lower valuation and list sooner in late 2026, or hold out for the full $1 trillion target and wait until 2027. CEO Sam Altman reportedly rejected any reduction to the trillion-dollar figure as a "non-starter." CFO Sarah Friar had separately signalled a 2027 timeline to some associates, citing the company's spending commitments and the need to meet the rigorous reporting standards required of public companies.

Volatility in newly-listed tech stocks has reinforced the case for waiting. SpaceX completed its own record IPO on 12 June 2026 at a valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion, and subsequent swings in its share price reportedly gave OpenAI's "patience camp" its argument that retail appetite could be dampened by a premature listing.

Prediction markets reflect the uncertainty. As of mid-2026, traders on Kalshi placed roughly 59% odds on OpenAI formally announcing an IPO by 1 March 2027, and around 73% by June 2027, treating the confidential filing as a real catalyst that has nonetheless slid towards 2027.

There is also a structural consideration. OpenAI has been restructuring from its original non-profit roots into a for-profit public benefit corporation — a process that needs to be complete before a listing. For context, an IPO generally provides liquidity at the expense of some corporate freedom. Altman has previously noted that "when we develop superintelligence, we are likely to make some decisions that most investors would look at very strangely" — a candid acknowledgement of the tension between public-market accountability and OpenAI's stated mission.

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How to buy OpenAI shares if the company lists

If OpenAI does end up listing in the US, you can buy its shares from £0 commission with us. That's the rate if you've traded three or more times in the previous calendar month; otherwise our standard fee is £10. You'll be able to invest in OpenAI on the day of the listing.

To buy OpenAI shares if it lists, do your research on IPOs, open a share dealing account, search for OpenAI on our platform, choose the number of shares or amount of money you wish to invest, and place your deal. When dealing shares, you own the stock and become a shareholder — you'll profit if the share price rises above the point at which you bought, or potentially from any dividends paid, though you could get back less than you put in.

You can also trade the OpenAI IPO using leverage through a variety of products with us via spread betting or CFDs. This means you could gain or lose money quickly and could end up losing more than your initial deposit — this is higher risk and requires thorough risk management. Note that newly-listed stocks are often highly volatile in their first days and weeks of trading, which makes leveraged positions particularly risky around an IPO.

For more, see our guides on upcoming IPOs to watch, how to trade or invest in IPOs, and our coverage of the Anthropic IPO and SpaceX IPO.

What will OpenAI be valued at and what will the share price be?

OpenAI's most recent private valuation stood at $852 billion, set in March 2026 when the company closed a $122 billion funding round — one of the largest private fundraises in history — with commitments reported to include $30 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from NVIDIA, and a lead investment from SoftBank. This represented a dramatic increase from the $157 billion valuation at which it raised $6.6 billion in October 2024.

At IPO, Altman is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion — roughly 17% above the most recent private mark. To put that in perspective, it would make OpenAI one of the most valuable companies ever to list, and would price the business at an extraordinary multiple of its revenue.

That valuation is the source of considerable debate. OpenAI is generating revenue at remarkable speed — reportedly around $2 billion per month, or roughly $25 billion on an annualised basis, up from around $20 billion in full-year 2025. Enterprise customers now reportedly account for more than 40% of revenue. But the company remains heavily loss-making: it reportedly burned through $3.7 billion in Q1 2026 alone, more than half of its $5.7 billion in quarterly revenue, and analysts project full-year losses running into the tens of billions, with profitability not expected until around 2030.

A public listing would price OpenAI on financial returns, whereas its private backers — strategic investors like SoftBank and Microsoft — have had non-financial motivations such as compute access and partnership positioning. This gap between strategic and financial valuation is precisely why the IPO is so closely watched. The share price at launch is impossible to predict with any accuracy given no price range has been set, but would likely be structured in keeping with the premium pricing of major tech listings.

As a private company, OpenAI is not required to disclose its finances on a quarterly basis, so much of the available financial information comes from reporting and leaked documents rather than audited statements. This is one of the key risks for prospective investors — the full financial picture, including audited revenue, gross margins after compute costs, and contractual obligations, will only become clear when a public S-1 is filed.

What is OpenAI's business model?

OpenAI generates the majority of its revenue from two main sources: consumer subscriptions to ChatGPT, and licensing its platform and API to businesses that integrate OpenAI's models into their own products. Enterprise revenue has grown to represent more than 40% of the total and is reportedly on track to reach parity with consumer revenue.

OpenAI was initially founded in 2015 as a non-profit organisation with the goal of developing safe and beneficial artificial intelligence for humanity. It has since received tens of billions in funding from Microsoft, NVIDIA, SoftBank, Amazon and others, and operates under a capped-profit structure that it is now restructuring ahead of any listing.

The Microsoft relationship remains central to the business model, though it was renegotiated in 2026. Microsoft has invested billions and enjoys a deep commercial and technical partnership through its Azure cloud platform, having incorporated OpenAI technology across Bing, the Microsoft 365 suite and Copilot.

The growth trajectory is remarkable. ChatGPT acquired one million users just five days after launching in November 2022, and OpenAI has reported that ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million subscribers — making it one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history.

Competitors include Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Mistral AI, Meta AI, Cohere, Hugging Face and Baidu AI. Google's Gemini in particular has been reported to be slowing OpenAI's growth as Google integrates AI profitably across its vast ecosystem. None, however, have captured the imagination of the investing public to quite the same degree as OpenAI.

Why are there OpenAI ethical concerns?

There are numerous ESG and ethical issues to consider. At an immediate level, concerns over copyright and plagiarism persist, as do worries about AI displacing workers. Longer-term, the company is attempting to create artificial general intelligence that mimics human-like reasoning, which raises profound philosophical and safety questions.

The field of AI is evolving so quickly that it is very difficult to regulate, and even where regulation exists it is often implemented by individuals without deep expertise in the subject. There are also the substantial energy and raw-material requirements of the data centres needed to run AI applications at scale, alongside the potential military applications of the technology. Governance instability — Altman was briefly fired in late 2023 before being reinstated — heavy reliance on Microsoft, and ongoing talent departures are all cited by analysts as key risks for prospective investors.

OpenAI-related investments

While investors wait for a potential OpenAI IPO, there are several ways to gain indirect exposure to the company. The most obvious is through Microsoft, which has invested billions and enjoys a strong symbiotic relationship through Azure. NVIDIA and Amazon, both significant OpenAI investors and infrastructure partners, offer another route to indirect exposure.

For investors seeking more diversification, there are hundreds of AI-focused ETFs that host these OpenAI backers. Popular choices include the Vanguard Information Technology ETF and the Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF, which both count Microsoft, NVIDIA and Broadcom among their top holdings. For more on thematic AI investing, see our artificial intelligence thematic basket, our guide to the best AI ETFs to watch, and our best global ETFs article.

OpenAI IPO summed up

OpenAI filed a confidential draft S-1 with the SEC on 8 June 2026, but by late June was reportedly leaning towards a 2027 listing rather than late 2026. Its most recent private valuation is $852 billion, and Sam Altman is reportedly holding out for a valuation of up to $1 trillion at IPO. Microsoft remains the company's most significant strategic partner and a key route to indirect exposure. OpenAI developed and markets ChatGPT, one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history, but remains heavily loss-making with profitability not expected until around 2030. The OpenAI IPO may still be some way off, and nothing about its timing or valuation is confirmed — but you can invest indirectly through Microsoft and AI-focused ETFs in the meantime.

This article is for information purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any investment. IPO investments are speculative and high-risk. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you invest.

Interested in the OpenAI IPO? Open a share dealing account to be ready to invest if it lists, or explore upcoming IPOs and our artificial intelligence thematic basket for related opportunities available now.