OpenAI stock & IPO, answered

No. OpenAI is a private company. It filed a confidential draft S-1 with the SEC on June 8, 2026, but no shares trade publicly and no ticker has been assigned. In September 2026 Sam Altman said OpenAI would not go public in 2026.

Not directly. Until the IPO, exposure through an ordinary brokerage account is indirect: listed companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), which owns about 27%, SoftBank and Nvidia. Professional investors can sometimes buy pre-IPO shares on secondary platforms. Our how to buy guide covers both routes.

No date is set. OpenAI filed confidentially on June 8, 2026, and in September 2026 Sam Altman ruled out a 2026 listing, calling it an ill-advised moment given concerns about AI safety. 2027 is the likeliest window. The public S-1 has to appear at least 15 days before marketing of the shares starts.

Unknown. A ticker is usually revealed in the public S-1 or shortly before pricing. We'll update the site the moment one is confirmed.

Possibly, but in small amounts at best. Most shares in a large IPO go to institutions; individuals get access only through brokers that receive an allocation. OpenAI did raise more than $3 billion from individual investors through banks in its March 2026 round, which suggests it wants retail investors involved. Once trading starts, anyone with a broker that offers the exchange can buy.

OpenAI was valued at $852B post-money after its $122B round closed on March 31, 2026, the largest private financing on record. In October 2024 it was valued at $157 billion.

OpenAI has no market cap because it is private: a market capitalization only exists once shares trade on an exchange. The nearest equivalent is its latest post-money valuation of $852B post-money, a negotiated round price rather than a live market value.

OpenAI's annualized revenue run-rate was about $70B at its latest reading in our snapshot (End Sep 2026), up from about $6 billion in 2024. Run-rate annualizes a recent month rather than adding up a year. The public S-1 will show audited revenue by business for the first time.

Four ways: ChatGPT subscriptions for individuals, ChatGPT and agent platforms sold to companies, per-token access to its models through the API, and since February 2026 ads shown to free users. Enterprise overtook consumer revenue in 2026, according to OpenAI's finance chief.

No. OpenAI spends heavily on computing power and research and expects to keep losing money for several more years while it builds capacity under its multi-year compute commitments. The public S-1 will show the size of the losses.

After its October 2025 recapitalization, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation held about 26%, Microsoft about 27%, and employees and investors the rest. The 2026 round added SoftBank, Amazon, Nvidia and many funds. The foundation appoints the whole board, so it controls the company despite owning a minority of the shares.

Microsoft is the largest by percentage. The latest round was led by SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, with Amazon committing $50 billion and Nvidia and SoftBank $30 billion each. Earlier rounds were led by Thrive Capital and SoftBank.

No, but it owns about 27%, the largest single stake. Microsoft has no control over the board, which is appointed by the OpenAI Foundation. It keeps rights to OpenAI's technology through 2032 and receives a capped share of OpenAI's revenue through 2030.

Microsoft (MSFT) is the closest by ownership. SoftBank (9984 in Tokyo) owns a large stake, Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN) invested in 2026, and Oracle (ORCL) and AMD (AMD) depend on OpenAI as a customer. In every case OpenAI is a small part of a much larger company.

Only in limited ways. Shares occasionally change hands on secondary marketplaces and through special-purpose vehicles, usually restricted to professional investors, with high minimums and fees. OpenAI has warned that it does not recognize some unauthorized offerings of its shares, so be careful with anything that promises easy access.

OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a nonprofit by a group including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. Altman is chief executive, Sarah Friar is chief financial officer and Bret Taylor chairs the board. Musk left the board in 2018 and later sued; a jury rejected his main claims in May 2026.

The nonprofit that started OpenAI, renamed in October 2025. It owns about a quarter of OpenAI Group PBC, appoints its entire board, and holds a warrant for more shares if the company's value rises far enough. Its stake is meant to fund charitable work while keeping the company tied to its mission.

On the latest figures, OpenAI is valued at $852B against Anthropic's $965B, with run-rate revenue of $70B against about $65B. That puts OpenAI at about 12 times revenue versus about 15 times for Anthropic. OpenAI has far more users through ChatGPT; Anthropic earns most of its money from businesses.

Compute commitments far larger than current revenue, years of expected losses, competition from Anthropic, Google and open-weight models, the challenge of earning money from free users, partners such as Microsoft that also compete with it, and copyright and regulatory cases. The public S-1 will set out the risks in OpenAI's own words.