OpenAI Prepares for a Trillion-Dollar IPO Amidst the Global AI Competition

OpenAI Prepares for a Trillion-Dollar IPO Amidst the Global AI Competition

OpenAI, the leading artificial intelligence company, is reportedly gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) that may happen in late 2026. This IPO could value the company at a staggering $1 trillion, highlighting the increasing interest in AI investments.

Key Takeaways

OpenAI aims to launch its IPO in late 2026 with a possible valuation of $1 trillion.
The IPO could facilitate a capital raise of $60 billion.
A representative from OpenAI emphasized that the company's primary focus remains on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Recent developments show that Chinese AIs have outperformed ChatGPT in autonomous crypto trading.

OpenAI, a major player in the artificial intelligence sector, is reportedly planning an initial public offering (IPO) slated for late 2026. This IPO could potentially elevate OpenAI, the world’s largest startup, to a remarkable valuation of $1 trillion. According to three anonymous sources cited by Reuters, the company is looking to raise around $60 billion through this offering.

The formal application to the United States securities regulators is expected in the latter half of 2026, allowing OpenAI to enter public markets sooner than its previously stated goal of 2027. However, an OpenAI spokesperson mentioned to Reuters that there is currently no specific date for the IPO. The main priority for the company continues to be the advancement of artificial general intelligence (AGI). They stated, “We are building a durable business and advancing our mission so everyone benefits from AGI.”

The scale of the proposed IPO illustrates the increasing institutional interest in the development of AI technologies. OpenAI has already achieved a valuation of $500 billion during a secondary share sale on October 2, confirming its status as the largest startup globally. In that particular round of share sales, OpenAI employees sold a total of $6.6 billion worth of stock to significant corporate investors, surpassing the valuation of Elon Musk's SpaceX, which stands at $400 billion.

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Chinese AI Competitors Surpass ChatGPT in Crypto Trading

Despite its substantial financial backing, OpenAI's flagship AI model, ChatGPT, has recently been outperformed in a specialized area: autonomous crypto trading. In a recent competition focused on this niche, Chinese AI chatbots DeepSeek and Qwen3 Max managed to temporarily surpass both ChatGPT and Grok in crypto trading activities.

As of October 22, DeepSeek was the only AI model to achieve a positive trading return of about 9%. In contrast, ChatGPT-5 fell to the bottom of the ranking with a staggering 66% loss.

AI models in crypto trading competition. Source: CoinGlass

The outcomes have been unexpected, especially given that DeepSeek was developed with a training budget of only $5.3 million—mere pennies in comparison to OpenAI's whopping $5.7 billion spends on research and development initiatives in just the first half of 2025.

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According to Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at crypto intelligence platform Nansen, the efficiency of these AI models in trading could be boosted with the right prompts and enhanced training data. "If all models received the same prompts and trading instructions, the differences likely stem from the data each model was trained on," he explained to Cointelegraph.

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