OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at a Wednesday all-hands that the company “will be a public company in 2027,” and possibly sooner if “our business continues to inflect.” That’s a sharp reversal from her November posture at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event, where she said an “IPO is not on the cards right now,” and from the company’s own line in June, when it filed its confidential S-1 and said it had “not decided on timing yet.”

The date now exists because the comparison forced it. Anthropic filed its own confidential S-1 on June 1, and by end of July was clocking a $65 billion annualized run rate, roughly sevenfold growth year over year, on $11.5 billion in Q2 revenue with positive adjusted operating income. Its May round valued it at $965 billion, $113 billion above OpenAI’s most recent $852 billion private mark. Some Anthropic investors are floating a $2 trillion-plus listing. Reuters has pegged OpenAI’s own IPO target at $1 trillion.

Friar’s framing was disciplined. “The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise,” she said, before reminding staff the company “raised $122 billion in March, and that gives us flexibility.” On Anthropic’s potential September debut: “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 numbers she needs are arriving. Revenue run rate is up 35% quarter to date, enterprise up 50%, and enterprise now annualizes to $40 billion, having flipped the 60-40 consumer-weighted split from January. July alone delivered 32% enterprise growth. Codex has 20 million weekly active users. Q2 revenue hit $6.7 billion, up 18% sequentially, per the Journal. Operating losses, also per the Journal: $12.3 billion.

The context underneath the pitch is less tidy. Product chief Fidji Simo stepped down in July. Revenue chief Denise Dresser left last week after eight months. Two days earlier, Brad Lightcap announced he was ending his eight-year run to “start something new.” Monday, a $7 billion secondary closed at the same $852 billion mark from March. Friar is selling continuity at exactly the moment the org chart insists on the opposite.

Sources