OpenAI's Challenge: Pursuing a Trillion-Dollar IPO While Building Public Trust
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The Week in Short
OpenAI announces its new structure, with the biggest-ever IPO on the horizon. European dealmakers are scoring wins, but fundraising lags. Bending Spoons revives dead brands to reach $11 billion valuation. Food & shopping startups are back, alongside buzzy AI deals like Applied Compute. Navan gets its IPO out, but shares drop. AI-driven layoffs are on the rise. Forge Global wobbles as secondary market prices stay muted. Big Tech investment spree accelerates, but Meta shares fall on spending concerns.
The Main Item
Sam Altman & Bret Taylor Got Microsoft & California’s AG on Board With OpenAI’s Restructuring. Now Comes the Hard Part.
The ink was barely dry on OpenAI’s deal to resolve its corporate governance issues when the chatter turned to a possible IPO, which Reuters reported could come as soon as the second half of next year. It would almost certainly be the largest public offering ever by a wide margin, when the AI leader could raise $60 billion or more at a valuation of around $1 trillion.
There are of course a thousand contingencies for any such event, with the most important being buoyant capital markets and continued retail investor enthusiasm for all things AI. During a week in which Nvidia hit a $5 trillion valuation, just three months after crossing the never-before-seen $4 trillion threshold, loose talk about a trillion-dollar IPO is just another day at the office.
Wherever you stand on the AI bubble question, the extraordinary acceleration in valuations we’ve seen over the past year will certainly slow at some point, at a minimum. Earnings from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta this week suggest demand for AI compute is far from sated, but there’s growing scrutiny of the business case for huge capital investments.
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As Tom noted a month ago, OpenAI is now holding up valuations all across the industry. Sam Altman has brilliantly positioned the company as the
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