Investing in ChatGPT: Will OpenAI’s IPO Happen Soon?

OpenAI soon accessible on the stock market? It’s possible! The CFO of the company behind ChatGPT recently announced that a portion of OpenAI’s IPO would be allocated to individual investors (without specifying, for now, the date of the initial public offering).

But is investing in OpenAI on the stock market worth it? Between historical growth, sky-high valuation, and an unprecedented financial chasm, an analysis of the stakes and a practical guide from the online broker ActivTrades for investors who want to participate in the decade’s most anticipated IPO.

Who is OpenAI? Key figures of the ChatGPT-creating company

OpenAI is today the most well-known artificial intelligence company in the world. Founded in December 2015 in San Francisco as a nonprofit organization by well-known entrepreneurs such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk (among others), it has evolved dramatically since then.

In 2019, a for-profit subsidiary was created to attract capital and support its development, and Microsoft became the strategic partner with more than $13 billion in investments. In October 2025, OpenAI completed its transformation into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a status compatible with a stock market listing. At that time, Microsoft owned nearly 27% of this for-profit subsidiary.

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked tech history with rapid adoption, reaching 100 million users in just two months. After surpassing a billion dollars in annual revenue less than a year after ChatGPT’s launch, OpenAI now says it generates $2 billion in monthly revenue. This growth far surpasses the records formerly held by Alphabet or Meta. As of early 2026, ChatGPT remains the benchmark application in the artificial intelligence market.

OpenAI Key Figures

What do we know about the OpenAI IPO? The most anticipated stock market debut since Meta (formerly Facebook)

Becoming a listed company would allow OpenAI to finance its massive computing infrastructure needs to grow and to access more sophisticated debt instruments, essential to maintaining its global competitive edge.

Although details of a potential IPO have not yet been disclosed, OpenAI appears to be actively preparing for what could be the decade’s most anticipated and significant listing. After all, it would not want to be outpaced by its biggest rival: Anthropic!

Valued at $852 billion, OpenAI already adopts the governance discipline typical of listed companies. The CFO of the San Francisco giant, Sarah Friar, notes that this shift toward a listed-company model is a natural step to support the company’s technological needs.

Moreover, OpenAI’s leadership appears to explicitly want to bring individual investors to the heart of its equity. This approach, inspired by Tesla and SpaceX, aims to establish a relationship of trust between AI and the general public.

The company has already tested this demand in recent funding rounds, raising more than $3 billion from individual investors via banking networks. Additionally, including OpenAI shares in several funds managed by ARK Invest announced at the end of March confirms this intention to broaden ownership far beyond the circle of venture capital funds.

What should we monitor to take advantage of the potential OpenAI IPO?

• Official statements from the founders and the CFO regarding the timeline of a potential stock market listing.
• The filing of the S-1 form with the SEC would formalize OpenAI’s entry into the stock market, perhaps by the end of 2026. However, if Anthropic decides to go public first, this could push OpenAI to accelerate its own listing process to preserve its dominance and to capture available capital in the AI market first.
• OpenAI’s SpaceX IPO, potentially planned for June, will serve as a major test of individual investor enthusiasm. Under the leadership of its founder Elon Musk, SpaceX intends to allocate a historically large portion of its equity to the retail investor segment. According to Reuters, this reserve could reach 30% of the shares, an unprecedented threshold that breaks with sector norms where it typically does not exceed 5 to 10%.

OpenAI: extraordinary growth

In less than four years, OpenAI has scaled to an extraordinary level, rising from zero to nearly $25 billion in annualized revenue according to The Information. This trajectory is mainly driven by subscriptions, which accounted for about 75% of revenue by the end of 2024.

Moreover, the enterprise segment — driven by the deployment of large-scale AI solutions — already accounts for nearly 40% of revenue. Leadership has stated a goal to achieve a balanced split between consumer and enterprise customers by the end of 2026, which would lead to greater maturity in the corporate market and a deeper integration of AI into business operations.

This dynamic is part of a broader shift in how AI is used. According to Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s Chief Revenue Officer, the most advanced players no longer merely boost individual productivity: they now orchestrate real teams of autonomous agents. This shift toward structured automation of cognitive tasks is a meaningful value-creation lever and partly justifies the high valuation expectations.

Dresser also notes a direct correlation between computing power and OpenAI’s revenue growth. Between 2023 and 2025, compute power rose from 0.2 GW to about 1.9 GW (a 9.5x increase), while annualized recurring revenue (ARR) followed a similar path, climbing from $2 billion to over $20 billion in the same period (a 10x rise). This elasticity between infrastructure and monetization is central: it suggests that the main constraint is not demand but the supply of capacity.

According to CNBC (February 2026), OpenAI was aiming for about $280 billion in revenue by 2030 and computing expenses of nearly $600 billion. In 2025, the company reportedly generated $13.1 billion in revenue, beating its initial target of $10 billion. Reuters reports indicate that expenses rose to $8 billion in the same period, below the $9 billion anticipated, suggesting a relative improvement in operating efficiency despite the capital intensity of the model.

In the near term, the trajectory remains sharply upward. Also according to The Information (March 2026), OpenAI had reached more than $25 billion in annualized revenue by the end of February 2026, up 17% from $21.4 billion at the end of 2025 (a growth that the company has not confirmed).

However, a large share of ChatGPT users remains non-monetized. This strategic choice, embraced by OpenAI, aims to maximize adoption and network effects over time, even if it means bearing significant processing costs without immediate revenue. In the long run, these users represent a conversion reservoir (via subscriptions or potentially advertising, among other things) and a key lever to support the next monetization phase.

OpenAI: a financial abyss that investors cannot ignore

Behind the hyper-growth of OpenAI’s revenue lies a much less favorable financial reality: a level of spending and losses that, in magnitude, surpasses anything markets have seen so far.

The profitability picture itself depends on the lens used. According to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI presents its results under two distinct approaches.

On one hand, a view excluding the training costs of models, where it approaches operational breakeven by 2026; on the other, a view that includes these structural costs (essential to maintaining its technological edge) which pushes profitability prospects into the 2030s. Investors must decide which profitability interpretation to consider.

At the heart of these massive investments are inference costs, i.e., the marginal cost per query processed, notably via ChatGPT.

These costs still absorb more than half of revenue. The trend is indeed downward thanks to model efficiency improvements and architecture optimization, but at this stage, the volume effect from widespread adoption continues to weigh heavily on margins. Meanwhile, a large portion of users remains non-monetized as noted, which mechanically increases OpenAI’s cash-flow pressure.

The very nature of the AI industry makes computing power the central strategic asset to master. As Friar noted, it constitutes both a decisive competitive advantage and a direct lever to improve user experience, hence future revenue growth.

Yet this model demands extreme capital intensity. AI companies cannot settle for marginal investments. They must fund fundamental research, the ongoing training of increasingly complex models, the deployment of massive infrastructures (data centers, specialized GPUs, and more), and absorb high operating costs tied to usage.

Across the sector, this translates into a race to invest where the primary constraint is the ability to finance and deploy this infrastructure. But will the addressable market and monetization capacity be enough to justify such a high initial investment?

The crucial question of OpenAI’s valuation

OpenAI’s valuation has been at the heart of analyses since the company closed, at the end of March, a record fundraising round of $122 billion, surpassing February’s initial estimates around $110 billion.

This massive fundraising raised the company’s valuation to about $852 billion. According to Reuters projections, OpenAI could go public with a market capitalization that could reach, or even surpass, the symbolic $1 trillion mark.

That level of valuation is, however, the subject of debate among financial experts. With annualized revenues of $25 billion, such a market cap would imply a valuation multiple of roughly 40x revenue. While the company shows exceptional hypergrowth, this ratio is considered particularly aggressive, even by tech sector standards.

Should you participate in OpenAI’s future IPO? ActivTrades’ View

For ActivTrades, OpenAI may be the most transformative company of the decade. The company benefits from a top-tier ecosystem of strategic partners, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, strengthening both its execution capability and access to critical resources.

The growth fundamentals are undeniable: massive adoption, a brand that has become almost synonymous with public AI, and accelerated enterprise segment penetration, which now serves as a credible and structuring growth lever.

Nevertheless, its high implied valuation requires belief in future monetization that is not yet proven and rests on a key assumption: OpenAI’s ability to translate its technology lead into sustainable cash flow, in a context where the business model remains highly capital-intensive. Added to this are substantial risks (legal, regulatory, competitive, and financial) that match the opportunity.

In this context, participating in an eventual IPO would be more of a long-term bet on the structure and potential of the AI economy than an investment based on traditional profitability metrics.

For investors seeking exposure to this investment theme today, several alternatives already exist. Key players in the value chain such as ASML in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, Palantir Technologies in data analytics software, or Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia, combine exposure to the AI industry with business models that are already (to varying degrees) proven.

A diversified approach through ETFs or stock trackers specialized in AI can also capture sector growth while offering exposure to a basket of leading AI companies.

10 potential reasons to invest in OpenAI

1. OpenAI benefits from a key positioning at the heart of AI infrastructure
2. Artificial intelligence is a market that touches almost every sector
3. OpenAI rides many tech megatrends: cloud, automation, productivity, data…
4. OpenAI relies on a premier ecosystem of partners
5. It is a dominant brand with global adoption
6. OpenAI has recorded unprecedented growth
7. OpenAI is implementing a strategic shift toward the enterprise sector
8. OpenAI has decided to offer broad access to its potential IPO for individual investors
9. It can still benefit from an pricing lever that remains underutilized, with the majority of ChatGPT users on the free version
10. OpenAI could benefit from structural efficiency gains and future profitability as models improve

8 potential reasons not to invest in OpenAI’s stock market listing

1. OpenAI’s valuation is rather excessive
2. OpenAI’s business is highly capital-intensive
3. OpenAI faces strong sensitivity to AI hype (cyclical and volatile sector)
4. The company is currently recording losses (potentially durable)
5. It faces significant legal and regulatory risks
6. OpenAI has a certain dependence on Microsoft
7. There is growing competition from tech giants
8. OpenAI could face a risk of technological standardization as models diffuse and differentiation erodes

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