OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told employees at an Aug. 19 all-hands meeting that the company “will be a public company in 2027,” possibly sooner, offering the clearest internal timeline yet for a listing that Reuters has reported could target a valuation of as much as $1 trillion. Two people familiar with her remarks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the meeting, relayed the comments to CNBC.

Friar framed the milestone with studied unromanticism. “The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise,” she said, adding that “we raised $122 billion in March, and that gives us flexibility.” OpenAI filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission under confidential cover in June without setting a debut date. On Monday, the company closed a $7 billion secondary share sale at an $852 billion valuation.

The pitch to staff arrived alongside numbers that cut in both directions. Friar’s slides showed a 35 percent overall run-rate increase quarter to date, a 50 percent enterprise run-rate increase, 20 million weekly active users on Codex, and an annualized revenue run rate that has recently passed $40 billion. “Our business continues to inflect,” she said.

The Wall Street Journal, however, reported Wednesday that OpenAI booked $6.7 billion in Q2 revenue, up 18 percent from Q1, against a $12.3 billion quarterly operating loss. Anthropic’s preliminary Q2 revenue exceeded $11.5 billion, more than double OpenAI’s, and delivered the rival’s first quarter of positive adjusted operating income. Anthropic told its own investors its annualized run rate hit $65 billion by the end of July. Friar acknowledged Anthropic has also filed confidentially, noting “there is a chance they pull the cover off that confidential file in the coming weeks and become public in September. That’s OK, we are running our own race.”

The race is also being run with a thinning bench. Revenue chief Denise Dresser left last week after eight months. Two days before the all-hands, longtime executive Brad Lightcap announced the end of an eight-year tenure. In July, product business chief Fidji Simo stepped down to focus on her health. President Greg Brockman characterized the departures as “actually that atypical,” a phrasing whose grammar strains under the weight of what it’s asked to carry.

A confidential S-1, a competitor booking twice your revenue, and an executive suite reshuffling itself two years before the target listing: the 2027 date is less a plan than a pre-commitment device, spoken aloud so it becomes harder to unsay.

Sources