OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an Aug. 19 all-hands that the company “will be a public company in 2027,” and could move sooner if “our business continues to inflect,” according to two people familiar with the remarks who spoke to CNBC. The commitment landed the same week reports revealed that Anthropic’s second-quarter revenue had, for the first time, exceeded OpenAI’s.

The numbers explain the timing. OpenAI booked $6.7 billion in Q2 revenue, up 18 percent from Q1, per a Wall Street Journal report. Anthropic booked roughly $11.6 billion with positive adjusted operating income. On Aug. 13, Bloomberg reported OpenAI’s annualized run rate had topped $40 billion, roughly double its end-of-2025 rate. Operating losses widened to $12.3 billion in the quarter.

Friar’s slides told a different story than the WSJ leak: overall run rate up 35 percent quarter to date, enterprise revenue up 50 percent, the AI coding and work product at 20 million weekly active users. She framed the listing as continuous with prior fundraising. “The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise.” And: “We raised $122 billion in March, and that gives us flexibility.” OpenAI is currently valued at $852 billion and filed its prospectus confidentially with the SEC in June.

On the competitor, Friar was direct: “As you know we are confidentially under file, and Anthropic is also under file. There is a chance they pull the cover off that confidential file in the coming weeks and become public in September. That’s OK, we are running our own race.”

The race is being run with a thinning bench. Revenue chief Denise Dresser departed after eight months, Brad Lightcap announced his exit, and product chief Fidji Simo stepped back earlier this year. The 2027 date isn’t a plan so much as a deadline the market has already begun enforcing.

Sources