OpenAI is targeting a September 2026 initial public offering, working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on what could be one of the largest tech debuts in years. Sam Altman is pushing for the ChatGPT maker to go public within four months, and the company may file confidential IPO paperwork with regulators within days or weeks.
The timing sets up a direct financial contest with SpaceX, which is expected to file its own IPO paperwork as soon as May 20, 2026. SpaceX now controls xAI, the AI model maker founded by Elon Musk, making it a direct OpenAI competitor in both the AI model and public-market races.
OpenAI's IPO push comes one day after a court dismissed Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company on statute of limitations grounds. That ruling, which we covered yesterday, removed a legal overhang that had threatened OpenAI's corporate structure and financing arrangements.
Key facts
- 01OpenAI is targeting a September 2026 IPO, working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
- 02The company may file IPO paperwork confidentially with regulators within days or weeks.
- 03SpaceX IPO filings are expected to appear as soon as Wednesday, May 20, 2026.
- 04OpenAI moves forward one day after Elon Musk lost his lawsuit against the company on statute of limitations grounds.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are both tech-IPO powerhouses with decades of experience pricing and stabilizing large offerings. Their dual involvement signals OpenAI expects significant institutional demand and wants the capital-markets muscle to handle a potentially volatile debut.
The ChatGPT business has been scaling rapidly. OpenAI crossed $3.4B in annualized revenue in Q4 2025, driven primarily by API sales and ChatGPT subscriptions. The company has not disclosed whether it is currently profitable or what its IPO valuation target might be.
SpaceX's IPO filings are expected imminently. Musk's rocket maker absorbed xAI earlier this year, consolidating Musk's AI and space ambitions under one public vehicle. The two companies now compete directly on frontier models, agentic products, and long-context reasoning.
OpenAI's path to public markets has been complicated by its unusual nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion structure. The company has been gradually unwinding those governance constraints to satisfy public-market investors, a process that Musk's now-dismissed lawsuit had sought to block.
The next Musk-versus-Altman battle plays out in the public markets rather than the courtroom. Both companies are racing to file, price, and debut within weeks of each other, a rare head-to-head that will test investor appetite for AI growth at scale versus profitability timelines.
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