But it hasn’t quite happened that way. <\/p>\n
OpenAI reportedly delayed its initial public offering<\/a> to 2027 due to concerns about dwindling market enthusiasm and increased competition from rivals like Anthropic, whose Claude AI assistant has been gaining popularity. <\/p>\n But perhaps the most concerning development has been the exodus of C-suite-level talent from the company in recent months. <\/p>\n In April, OpenAI saw three top executives leave in one day, Business Insider<\/a> reported. Kevin Weil, who headed the company’s scientific research efforts after serving as chief product officer; Bill Peebles, who headed its now-defunct video app Sora; and Srinivas Narayanan, its chief technology officer for business-to-business applications, all said goodbye. <\/p>\n This week, the company lost another executive when Fidji Simo, its number-two executive, told OpenAI she was also leaving. <\/p>\n OpenAI loses top lieutenant after extended medical leave <\/p>\n In an internal note to staff, viewed by The Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Simo told colleagues she is leaving OpenAI. <\/p>\n According to the note, Simo, who had been away from her full-time role due to an extended medical leave, is stepping away because her medical condition has worsened and her road to recovery will be much longer than originally anticipated. <\/p>\n Simo has reportedly been battling a chronic neuroimmune condition called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome since 2019. <\/p>\n She will continue as a part-time adviser to the company, but she is officially stepping down as CEO Sam Altman<\/a>‘s right hand. She announced that she was taking medical leave in April after telling staff that her condition had worsened. <\/p>\n Simo joined the company last August to take a role that would free up Sam Altman from the day-to-day minutiae of running the nearly trillion-dollar company. Her duties included overseeing the chief financial officer and chief revenue officer, and leading OpenAI’s product and business divisions. <\/p>\n Her departure in April “created a leadership vacuum at the time, raising questions among investors and employees about the future direction of the company,” the Journal reported. <\/p>\n “This has been one of the hardest decisions of my career, but my body left me no choice \u2014my symptoms became as loud as I am stubborn,” she said in the internal note. <\/p>\n While her condition is clearly out of her control, the timing could not be worse for OpenAI. <\/p>\n Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI’s valuation<\/a> for the first time as enterprise customers seem to prefer the former’s product over OpenAI’s at this early stage in the game. <\/p>\n This week, Reuters reported<\/a> that Bank of America has extended a $520 million credit line to OpenAI ahead of its IPO<\/a>. <\/p>\n While this is the first time BofA has extended a loan to the company, the credit line makes the bank one of OpenAI’s largest lenders. A source told Reuters that Bank of America is eyeing advisory roles on the planned IPOs of both OpenAI and Anthropic. <\/p>\n OpenAI is targeting a valuation of more than $1 trillion, according to reports, though the company did not disclose the size or terms of its public debut in its confidentially filed IPO application last month. <\/p>\n It that report is true, OpenAI would immediately become one of the top-15 most-valuable companies in the world, right behind Berkshire Hathaway. <\/p>\n Anthropic also confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO last month, just weeks after it raised $65 billion in a funding round that valued the company at $965 billion. <\/p>\n Earlier this year, OpenAI said it raised $110 billion from technology heavy hitters including SoftBank, Amazon, and Nvidia<\/a> at an $840 billion valuation. <\/p>\n Earlier this year, Moby reported<\/a> that OpenAI generated net revenue of $13.1 billion in 2025 while incurring a net loss of $38.5 billion, though it cited Ed Zitron, the reporter who broke the news, adding the caveat that OpenAI converted from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity last year. That led to a nearly $42 billion loss, due to changes in the fair value of convertible interests and warrant liability. <\/p>\n In other words, all early investor IOUs that later converted into equity became debt on the books. That debt spiked, along with OpenAI’s value. <\/p>\n Still, OpenAI reportedly only lost $5 billion in 2024. <\/p>\n Related: Your wallet is being put in danger by OpenAI<\/a> <\/p>\n This story was originally published by TheStreet<\/a> on Jul 11, 2026, where it first appeared in the Technology<\/a> section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The year 2026 wasn’t supposed to be like this for OpenAI. The company was finally set to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[53,38290,8252,53390,52590,157,370],"class_list":["post-102901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-anthropic","tag-chief-technology-officer","tag-fidji-simo","tag-medical-condition","tag-medical-leave","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> Fidji Simo is stepping down from her role as Sam Altman’s top lieutenant. Bloomberg / Getty Images OpenAI receives $520 million credit line from Bank of America <\/p>\n