OpenAI filed its confidential S-1 with the SEC on May 22, setting up a September debut and a valuation band from $852 billion to more than $1 trillion. If it prices at the top, it will be the largest IPO in the history of public markets — and the most expensive test yet of whether scale alone justifies a price.
The financials read in two directions at once. OpenAI pulls roughly $2 billion a month, reached a $25 billion annualized run rate by March, and counts 50 million consumer subscribers and 9 million business users. It also loses $1.22 for every dollar of revenue. The same prospectus that argues for a trillion-dollar valuation has to disclose, in writing, that the core business does not yet cover its own cost.
The timing was engineered as much as it was chosen. The dismissal of Elon Musk’s lawsuit on May 20 removed the last legal overhang, and the filing followed within forty-eight hours. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading. Enterprise now drives more than 40 percent of revenue, the line underwriters will press hardest, because it is the only part of the story that suggests durability rather than momentum.
September forces a question the private market never had to answer: at a trillion dollars, is OpenAI a company or a wager on what one might become. The S-1 makes the bull case in revenue and the bear case in the same document.
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