OpenAI might be filing to go public soon. How we got here.

OpenAI is reportedly working with bankers on a draft IPO prospectus it plans to file confidentially with U.S. regulators as early as Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. The company, which has become a global leader in artificial intelligence since launching ChatGPT in 2022, is poised to become one of the most anticipated public offerings in tech history. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI initially aimed to advance digital intelligence for broad societal benefit. Musk left the company in 2018 to avoid conflicts with Tesla’s AI research but later sued OpenAI in 2024, alleging it had abandoned its nonprofit mission. A federal jury dismissed the lawsuit in April 2025, ruling that the claims were time-barred. OpenAI’s growth accelerated after Microsoft invested $1 billion in 2019, launching a multiyear partnership that included exclusive licensing of AI models. By 2022, ChatGPT had revolutionized public access to generative AI, with over 50 million paid subscribers and 900 million weekly users as of February 2025. The platform’s rapid updates have solidified its dominance in the AI space. The company’s structure has shifted from nonprofit to a hybrid model, with its for-profit arm transitioning to a public-benefit corporation in 2025 while retaining a nonprofit foundation. In April 2025, Microsoft renewed its licensing agreement with OpenAI until 2032, though the arrangement is no longer exclusive. OpenAI will continue using Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud provider. Competition in AI remains fierce, with rivals like Meta, Alphabet, Perplexity, and Anthropic developing their own models. Musk’s xAI has also entered the race with Grok, an AI chatbot, further complicating OpenAI’s relationship with its co-founder. Despite challenges—including Altman’s brief ousting in late 2023—the company’s IPO could mark a pivotal moment in its evolution from a research lab to a publicly traded entity.