OpenAI's long-awaited public debut may be further off than expected. According to reporting published June 25, the company behind ChatGPT is leaning toward a 2027 initial public offering rather than the late-2026 timeline chief executive Sam Altman had preferred, after chief financial officer Sarah Friar warned internally that OpenAI is not yet ready for public markets.
The New York Times first reported Friar's caution, and Reuters confirmed that the company is leaning toward waiting until next year for its IPO. The shift comes despite the fact that OpenAI confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, Axios reported, a move that had kept a 2026 debut technically possible. For more context on this story, see our ongoing AI news.
The tension between Altman and his finance chief highlights the central challenge facing what could become one of the largest public offerings in history: how to sell investors huge growth, huge losses, and huge infrastructure bills at the same time.
The Numbers Behind the Hesitation
Friar's reluctance is grounded in financials that are difficult to frame for retail investors. OpenAI generated roughly $5.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026, according to figures published by The Information and cited by the Economic Times. In the same quarter, the company burned through an estimated $3.7 billion in cash, with projected losses approaching $14 billion for the full year.
The infrastructure stack makes this more than an ordinary high-growth IPO debate. OpenAI is tied to the $500 billion Stargate program, a reported Oracle capacity arrangement exceeding $300 billion, a $250 billion Azure services deal running through 2032, and an Amazon Web Services arrangement of roughly $138 billion. For a prospective shareholder, those are not footnotes. They are the operating model, and they represent one of the most expensive technology buildouts ever attempted.
Missed Targets and a Lofty Valuation
The Wall Street Journal reported in late April that OpenAI had missed internal goals for revenue and weekly active users earlier in 2026, including a target of one billion weekly active ChatGPT users. At most companies a missed target is a footnote. At OpenAI, which is reportedly valued north of $850 billion, every shortfall becomes a valuation question.
That scrutiny is sharpened by a recent cautionary tale. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, opened at $150 on June 12, climbed as high as $225.64 on June 16, and then fell back to $154.54 by June 24, according to CNBC and Yahoo Finance. The offering remains above its debut price, but the volatility illustrated how quickly a giant listing can turn into a test of investor nerve. OpenAI's story is arguably harder to price cleanly than SpaceX's, given its mix of subscriptions, enterprise contracts, compute obligations, and ongoing governance restructuring.
A CFO-Founder Tension Worth Watching
The relationship between Friar and Altman is the detail investors are watching most closely. The Information has reported that Altman excluded Friar from some conversations about OpenAI's financial plans, a dynamic that would be unusual for any company nearing an IPO and is particularly delicate for one still working through a nonprofit-to-for-profit restructuring.
Friar is not a cautious outsider slowing a founder's ambition. She served as Square's CFO through its public debut and later ran Nextdoor as chief executive. She knows what public-company readiness demands, including the work founders rarely relish: disclosure discipline, quarterly earnings pressure, internal controls, and board alignment.
Why 2027 May Be the Adult Answer
A delay to 2027 would not necessarily signal weakness. It would suggest that someone inside the company still understands the difference between private-market momentum and public-market durability. You can raise money on belief. You cannot stay public on belief alone.
The confidential SEC filing buys OpenAI time before it must show investors the full book. A late first-quarter 2027 window, as analysts have reportedly suggested, would let Friar put more quarters behind the revenue story and give Altman additional runway to complete the governance overhaul. The company may still stage one of the biggest IPOs in history. But if it wants public investors to trust the numbers, its chief financial officer may need to win this argument first.
For the broader AI sector, the timing matters beyond OpenAI. A delayed listing keeps the industry's most-watched valuation private for longer, sustaining the speculative premium that has defined the current funding cycle. Whenever OpenAI does go public, its disclosed financials will set a benchmark that every rival lab, from Anthropic to xAI, will be measured against.
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