OpenAI Targets Historic $850B IPO Amid Apple Lawsuit Pressure
OpenAI is on the path to potentially one of the most significant public market debuts in history. The company is targeting a September 2026 IPO with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters. The private-market valuation is estimated between $730 billion to $850 billion. Analysts predict it could surpass $1 trillion in market capitalization on opening day, making it one of the five largest IPOs in U.S. history.
The confidential S-1 filing, submitted to the SEC in June 2026, marks a milestone for OpenAI as it will be the first time the company’s financials will be public. CFO Sarah Friar confirmed that the company’s annualized revenue exceeded $20 billion at the end of 2025. This rapid growth is largely attributed to the success of ChatGPT Enterprise and its Codex coding platform. OpenAI’s most recent funding round closed at an astonishing $852 billion post-money valuation, setting a record for the largest private funding round in history.
However, the journey to IPO is becoming increasingly complex. A recent trade-secret lawsuit filed by Apple on July 11 alleges that OpenAI’s hardware division was built on stolen intellectual property. This lawsuit arrives at a sensitive time and could potentially affect the company’s S-1 disclosures and deter institutional investors ahead of the listing.
Adding to the competitive landscape, rival Anthropic has also confidentially filed its own S-1, targeting a 2026 listing at a reported valuation near $965 billion. This sets up the latter half of 2026 as the first real public-market stress test for frontier AI valuations.
Source: Build Fast With AI – AI News Today July 12, 2026