TL;DR: OpenAI has crossed $25 billion in annualized revenue and is reportedly in early talks about a public listing, potentially as soon as late 2026.

OpenAI has surpassed $25 billion in annualized recurring revenue and is quietly laying groundwork for an IPO that could arrive as early as the second half of 2026, according to sources familiar with the company's deliberations. If it proceeds, the offering would rank among the most consequential technology debuts of the decade.

  • Annualized revenue has crossed $25 billion — a figure that stood closer to $3.7 billion at the start of 2024, reflecting explosive enterprise and API adoption
  • Competitor Anthropic is approaching $19 billion in annualized revenue, with xAI also gaining ground; an OpenAI IPO would reprice the entire sector
  • OpenAI raised $122 billion in Q1 2026 alone as part of a record quarter: global venture investment hit $330.9 billion, with AI absorbing 81 percent of all capital deployed
  • The company completed its seventh known acqui-hire of 2026 — Hiro Finance on April 13 — signalling a push to assemble specialised vertical operator teams
  • New product launches include GPT-Rosalind, a life-sciences reasoning model targeting drug discovery and translational medicine, and ChatGPT Images 2.0

The IPO signal marks a pivotal governance moment. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit, restructured into a capped-profit entity, and has since operated under a hybrid model that has drawn scrutiny from regulators and former employees alike. Going public would require resolving outstanding questions about the relationship between its non-profit parent and the for-profit arm — and would subject the company to quarterly earnings disclosures and fiduciary duties its current structure avoids.

Analysts note that timing matters: a late-2026 window would coincide with what is expected to be a strong AI spending environment, with hyperscalers committing to multi-year compute contracts and enterprise AI adoption still accelerating. Risks include market volatility and the regulatory uncertainty that surrounds AI in both Washington and Brussels. Watch for any formal S-1 filing or restructuring announcement in the months ahead.