OpenAI: IPO Delayed to 2027, Altman Aims for $1 Trillion

OpenAI: IPO Delayed to 2027, Altman Aims for $1 Trillion Valuation

OpenAI is reportedly postponing its initial public offering (IPO) to 2027 as CEO Sam Altman insists on a valuation of $1 trillion. Advisors are recommending this delay due to volatile tech markets and the poor post-IPO performance of SpaceX. OpenAI is also continuing to post significant losses as the number of ChatGPT users stagnates.

This news led to a 13% drop in SoftBank's stock. This mega-investor from Japan, one of OpenAI's largest backers, was counting on a quick return on investment from the IPO.

Advisors are urging OpenAI to delay its IPO until next year. The reasons: unstable tech markets and SpaceX's disappointing stock performance following its record IPO. SoftBank, one of OpenAI's main investors, lost 13% in a single day.

OpenAI is leaning towards postponing its IPO to 2027. According to the New York Times, which cites three people involved in the discussions, the company initially aimed for the third or fourth quarter of 2026 and had already engaged bankers and lawyers.

CEO Sam Altman is pushing for a $1 trillion valuation, up from a previous private valuation of $730 billion. This demand appears to be the primary reason for the delay. Advisors have presented Altman with two options: go public in 2027 with this $1 trillion valuation, or move faster with a lower valuation. Altman has dismissed any option below a trillion as a "non-starter."

SpaceX's Chaotic Launch Raises Concerns for OpenAI Advisors

Rumors of a potential delay had already circulated. However, SpaceX's recent trajectory has given advisors new arguments. Elon Musk's rocket company executed the largest IPO in history this month, raising over $85 billion and reaching a valuation of $1.77 trillion on its first trading day. Since then, the stock has fallen from a peak of $202 to $153. Moreover, tech markets remain unstable as investors doubt AI companies' ability to deliver on their ambitious promises. Advisors have warned OpenAI that retail investors are unlikely to show much enthusiasm at this time.

By the end of 2025, CFO Sarah Friar stated that the company was not pursuing an IPO and was focusing on its finances. OpenAI then scaled back its secondary projects like the video generator Sora and began building a sales team to compete with Anthropic's Claude Code through its coding product Codex.

The way OpenAI is aggressively developing its B2B business became clear during a recent conversation between THE DECODER and Arnaud Fournier, CTO of the new subsidiary DeployCo. In this interview, Fournier stated that the Codex coding tool now has over four million weekly users worldwide—a fivefold increase in three months. He also highlighted the massive investments in OpenAI's computing infrastructure and described DeployCo engineers as the mechanism for deeply integrating models into business workflows. Figures like these, along with the promise of transforming businesses, constitute the story Altman wants to tell investors to justify the $1 trillion valuation.

However, the financial situation remains tight. OpenAI generated about $13 billion in revenue in 2025 and aims to triple that figure this year. The company is still not profitable and is heavily investing in data centers. The number of ChatGPT users has also stagnated around 900 million, well below the billion the company had hoped for.

SoftBank's Big Bet Takes a Hit

Rumors of a delay have particularly impacted the mega-investor SoftBank. The company's stock fell by 13%, its largest drop since August 2024, according to Bloomberg. SoftBank's investment in OpenAI is expected to reach around $65 billion by October. The prospect of an IPO had recently propelled SoftBank's market capitalization above that of Toyota.

Hiroki Takei, a strategist at Resona Holdings, told Bloomberg that an OpenAI IPO would provide a transparent market price for a large portion of SoftBank's assets and reduce the typical conglomerate discount on SoftBank's stock. "News of an IPO delay naturally dampens those expectations," Takei said.