(Reuters) -OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said an initial public offering is not in the startup’s near-term plans, speaking at the WSJ’s Tech Live conference on Wednesday.
“IPO is not on the cards right now,” Friar said. “We are continuing to get the company into a state of constantly stepping up into the scale we are at, so I don’t want to get wrapped around an IPO axle.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last week, Reuters reported that OpenAI was laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion.
Reuters had reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Friar had told some associates the company was aiming for a 2027 listing, with some advisers predicting it could come even sooner, around late 2026.
The remarks come shortly after OpenAI completed a major corporate overhaul in late October, converting its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation as part of a deal with Microsoft that valued the company at about $500 billion.
The restructuring gives OpenAI more operational freedom while keeping control under its nonprofit parent, now called the OpenAI Foundation, which holds a 26% stake and has a warrant to receive additional shares if the company hits certain milestones, positioning OpenAI to pursue new partnerships and capital investments.
OpenAI has ramped up spending on data centers, striking multibillion-dollar deals with tech giants including Alphabet’s Google and Amazon. Friar said the company is seeking U.S. government support to help guarantee financing for AI chips, which have uncertain depreciation rates and make debt financing costly.
“This is where we’re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental,” she said. “Any such guarantee can really drop the cost of the financing but also increase the loan-to-value.”
(Reporting by Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
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