OpenAI Delays IPO to 2027 After Missing Revenue Targets

Published by James Harris on June 26, 2026June 26, 2026

OpenAI is leaning toward pushing its IPO to 2027 rather than accepting a sub-$1 trillion valuation in a late-2026 listing, and WSJ reported earlier this week that the company has already missed recent internal revenue targets. CEO Sam Altman has told executives the $1 trillion floor is non-negotiable, which leaves the company with one realistic option: wait.

The calculus shifted when SpaceX’s IPO handed the market a live test case and failed to hold its gains. Shares surged past $225 before retreating, and SPCX was trading near $153 as of June 25, roughly 25 to 30 percent off its highs. Sources close to OpenAI’s deliberations told the Wall Street Journal and The Information that SpaceX’s trajectory has amplified concerns about how public markets would receive another high-profile AI listing at a stretched valuation. CFO Sarah Friar has been advocating the 2027 delay internally, pointing to OpenAI’s cash burn, $600 billion in compute infrastructure commitments through 2030, and the company’s readiness to meet public-company reporting obligations. OpenAI’s last private round valued it at approximately $850 billion, meaning the $1 trillion target requires either fresh investor enthusiasm or revenue growth that hasn’t materialized yet.

Anthropic filed its confidential S-1 with the SEC on June 1, targeting an October 2026 Nasdaq debut at a $965 billion valuation, and banks have told both companies that whoever lists first defines the new industry benchmark.

That framing cuts both ways. Anthropic going first at just under $1 trillion either validates the sector’s valuation range or absorbs the market’s skepticism before OpenAI arrives, and Altman’s direct engagement with the Trump administration on the IPO pitch suggests he understands the window is political as much as financial. Meanwhile, the administration asked OpenAI on June 25 to limit the release of GPT-5.6 to government-approved enterprise customers during a preview period, a softer mechanism than the Commerce Department export-control order that forced Anthropic to disable Mythos 5 and Fable 5 entirely. The government approving customers one at a time is a new operational constraint that has no obvious precedent in how frontier labs have gone to market before.

The governance picture compounds the valuation problem. Institutional investors pricing a $1 trillion offering will want a clean story on financials and structure, and as OpenAI’s own loss figures show, that story is still being written. Prediction markets have already moved sharply toward “no IPO by December 31, 2026,” and a Trump executive order framing the model-review process as voluntary has not stopped both frontier labs from operating under it. The delay gives OpenAI more