OpenAI Weighs Delaying IPO to 2027

The New York Times reported that OpenAI is leaning toward delaying a public offering until 2027, citing three people involved in the company's discussions. Reuters reported that OpenAI has confidentially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, and that CFO Sarah Friar has told associates the company is eyeing a 2027 listing. OpenAI's own June 8, 2026 announcement confirms the filing directly: "We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet." Reuters and the NYT reported advisers presented Altman with a choice between waiting for the higher, trillion-dollar valuation in 2027 or accepting a lower valuation for a faster 2026 listing, and the NYT reported Altman called any cut to that target a "non-starter." Separately, Reuters and The Information reported that U.S. government offices asked OpenAI to stagger the release of its next model, GPT-5.6, with Altman telling staff that access during the preview would be approved "customer by customer" (LDS has separate, dedicated coverage of the GPT-5.6 rollout and its safety disclosures).

Advisers reportedly pointed to SpaceX's June 12, 2026 debut as a cautionary comparison: SpaceX priced at $150 a share, briefly traded as high as $225, and has since settled back to roughly $156-162, a swing advisers see as a preview of how a mega-cap AI-adjacent IPO can trade. Cerebras, another recent AI-sector listing, has shown similar post-IPO volatility. Jefferies research cited by The Motley Fool found that $10 billion-plus IPOs over the past 26 years averaged 26.5% gains in their first week but just 3.5% a year later. OpenAI's own financials, per public estimates, show an operating loss of roughly $21 billion on about $34 billion in spending in 2025, against roughly $13 billion in revenue (a reported $20 billion annualized run rate) - a spending profile that helps explain why advisers may prefer more revenue growth before facing public-market scrutiny.

A possible 2027 listing and a government-coordinated GPT-5.6 preview point the same direction for teams planning around OpenAI: build schedule and access uncertainty into procurement and integration plans rather than assuming either a near-term public listing or unrestricted model access. Enterprises evaluating OpenAI as a vendor should treat both reports as a signal to verify current contractual access terms directly rather than relying on press timelines, since neither the IPO date nor the GPT-5.6 broad-availability date is yet confirmed by OpenAI.

Whether OpenAI files a public S-1 or otherwise confirms a listing timeline; how SpaceX and Cerebras shares trade over the coming months as a proxy for how a mega-cap AI IPO might be received; and whether the administration's model-access coordination around GPT-5.6 becomes a template applied to future OpenAI releases or other frontier labs.