A few hours after announcing the confidential filing of its IPO file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), OpenAI continues to maintain uncertainty over its timetable. The company says it has not made any final decision regarding its IPO, while acknowledging that it wants to keep this option open. This announcement comes less than three months after a secondary transaction valuing the company at $852 billion post-money, and just one week after a similar approach initiated by Anthropic.
At first glance, the event looks like a logical step in the ChatGPT creator’s meteoric rise. In reality, it marks a much deeper transformation: artificial intelligence is moving out of the world of venture capital and into that of public markets.
The question is no longer just whether OpenAI can become the most valuable technology company of its generation, but who will finance the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to build the world’s artificial intelligence infrastructure?
OpenAI prepares its third transformation
Since its creation, OpenAI has already changed its nature several times. The organization was born as a non-profit research laboratory. It then transformed into a commercial enterprise in order to attract the capital necessary to develop ever more powerful models. Then it became a mainstream player with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022.
Today, Sam Altman describes the entry into a “third phase”. After research and then products, OpenAI now aims to become the infrastructure that will allow the economy to reorganize itself around artificial intelligence.
This shift is visible in the company’s priorities, where model development remains central, but the bulk of investments now focus on compute, data centers, energy capacities and the infrastructure necessary to exploit AI at scale.
Venture capital reaches its limits
For several years, OpenAI enjoyed virtually unlimited access to private capital. Microsoft, SoftBank, Thrive Capital, Nvidia, MGX and several sovereign funds have helped finance its growth. Few companies in history have had access to such depth of financing before going public.
However, these resources are becoming insufficient given the scale of needs. Because unlike the software giants of the 2000s or 2010s, OpenAI must not only finance engineers and research centers, but must build computing capacities comparable to those of the world’s largest cloud operators.
Each new generation of models requires more GPUs, more power, and more physical infrastructure. The amounts needed now number in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The IPO thus appears less as an opportunity than as a structural necessity.
The real shareholder of OpenAI will not be the individual
In the collective imagination, an IPO allows millions of individual investors to buy shares in a company that has become iconic. The reality of financial markets is different.
A few months after its listing, OpenAI could quickly integrate the main American indices. From that point on, much of its capital would be automatically held by index funds and asset managers.
The main shareholders could then become the same as those of Microsoft, NVIDIA, Alphabet or Amazon: BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Capital Group, or the large American pension funds.
In other words, the future financiers of artificial intelligence will no longer be primarily Silicon Valley billionaires or venture capital funds but life insurance holders, American retirees, public pension funds and savers around the world.
The AI economy will then begin to be financed by global savings.
A new geography of technological power
This development raises a rarely addressed question: who will actually control artificial intelligence infrastructure?
If the debate mainly pits States against private companies, the arrival of public markets introduces a third actor: capital managers.
Large investment funds already hold significant stakes in the world’s leading digital infrastructures, from hyperscalers, telecom operators, energy networks and data centers.
Tomorrow, they could also become the main shareholders of the world leaders in artificial intelligence. The wealth produced by AI would then be increasingly held by the managers of global savings. Power would remain largely concentrated in the hands of the founders. Like Mark Zuckerberg at Meta or the founders of Alphabet before him, Sam Altman and his counterparts have or seek to put in place governance structures allowing them to maintain strategic control of their company despite the opening of capital. In other words, Wall Street would finance AI, but not necessarily direct it.
Europe facing a strategic paradox
The possible IPO of OpenAI also highlights a European contradiction. If European governments are increasing initiatives in favor of digital sovereignty, at the same time, a significant part of European savings is invested in American markets, directly or via index funds. If OpenAI joins the major international stock indices, European investors will also help finance its expansion.
The paradox that we mentioned previously is that Europe could continue to massively finance American AI champions while simultaneously seeking to build its own alternatives.
AI becomes an asset class
OpenAI’s IPO comes at the same time as its competitors. Anthropic also filed a confidential filing. SpaceX is preparing its arrival on the markets. At the same time, hyperscalers are further increasing their infrastructure spending, while Gulf sovereign wealth funds are investing tens of billions of dollars in compute and data centers.
For three years, artificial intelligence has been considered a technological revolution. Markets are now starting to treat it as an asset class in its own right.
Investors will no longer only seek to evaluate the performance of models or the quality of products. They will also analyze margins, capital requirements, calculation profitability and the ability of companies to turn massive investments into cash flow.
The era of technological demonstrations will gradually give way to that of financial analysis.
An IPO that surpasses OpenAI
The stakes of this IPO go far beyond the destiny of a single company. For the first time, public markets will be called upon to directly finance the construction of global artificial intelligence infrastructure.
So the real question is not who will buy the first shares of OpenAI. The question is who will finance the next industrial revolution. Because behind the listing of a company, a larger movement is already taking shape: the transition from artificial intelligence financed by venture capital to artificial intelligence financed by global savings.
