Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, appears on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Aug. 20, 2025.<\/p>\n
CNBC<\/p>\n
OpenAI<\/a> CFO Sarah Friar<\/a> told employees during an all-hands meeting on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence<\/a> lab “will be a public company in 2027,” but that it could make its public market debut sooner if “our business continues to inflect.”<\/p>\n “The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise,” Friar told employees, according to two sources familiar with her comments who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “We raised $122 billion<\/a> in March, and that gives us flexibility.”<\/p>\n OpenAI confidentially filed<\/a> its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, but it has not publicly disclosed when it plans to debut. The company’s chief rival, Anthropic, has also confidentially filed its prospectus<\/a> with regulators, and it’s been holding early meetings to test the waters with potential investors, as CNBC previously reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n Friar told employees on Wednesday not to worry if Anthropic makes its debut ahead of OpenAI.<\/p>\n “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,” Friar said, according to the people. <\/p>\n OpenAI is under pressure to justify its $852 billion valuation ahead of its IPO, and investors are eager to get a more detailed look into the company’s finances. <\/p>\n During the all-hands meeting on Wednesday, Friar showed employees a series of slides that said OpenAI’s revenue run rate is up 35% quarter to date, its enterprise revenue run rate is up 50% quarter to date and its AI coding and work product has hit 20 million weekly active users.<\/p>\n OpenAI told investors it generated $6.7 billion in revenue for the second quarter, up 18% from the first quarter, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal<\/a> late Wednesday. The company’s annualized revenue run rate recently topped $40 billion, as CNBC previously reported. <\/p>\n Anthropic, meanwhile, told investors over the weekend that its annualized revenue run rate\u00a0hit $65 billion at the end of July, a sevenfold increase from a year ago. The company also shared a preliminary revenue figure of $11.5 billion for the second quarter, as CNBC previously reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n