OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar Signals 2027 IPO Timeline, Confirms Confidential Filing

August 20: OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, told employees at an internal all-hands meeting that the company expects to go public in 2027 or possibly sooner, according to a CNBC report citing two sources who attended the meeting. The disclosure, reported by CNBC correspondent Kate Rooney, came just hours after the meeting concluded and offered the clearest public timeline yet for OpenAI’s long-anticipated listing. Friar reportedly told staff that the company has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, and that there is a chance the filing could be made public within weeks, potentially setting up a listing as early as September. She was careful to frame the IPO as a milestone rather than an endpoint, telling employees the offering is not a finish line but another fundraising step, pointing back to the company’s record $122 billion raise in March as evidence of the flexibility it already has. Friar’s message to staff was unambiguous: OpenAI will be a public company in 2027, and could move sooner if the business continues to inflect, but will do so on its own timeline.

Fresh Revenue Numbers Shared with Staff

Beyond the IPO timeline, Friar also shared previously unreported revenue figures with employees. CNBC’s Rooney said OpenAI’s order-to-date run rate revenue is up 35 per cent, with the enterprise segment growing faster at 50 per cent. Codex, the coding-focused product within the enterprise business, has reportedly hit $20 million in revenue, a ramp-up that coincides with the launch of the company’s newest model earlier this summer. The numbers were framed as evidence of business momentum at a time when OpenAI faces intensifying competition and scrutiny over its financials.

Timing Seen as a Response to Criticism

CNBC’s reporting placed the all-hands meeting in the context of a Wall Street Journal story published the same day, which described some of OpenAI’s second-quarter numbers as tepid and highlighted the company’s operating losses. On CNBC’s broadcast, anchor Scott Wapner and Rooney discussed whether Friar’s comments were a direct rebuttal to that criticism. Rooney said the undertone of the meeting suggested exactly that, even though Friar did not name the Journal report directly. She noted that OpenAI has long positioned itself as a company willing to spend aggressively for growth, arguing that profitability is not the immediate priority, a theme Rooney said was implicit though not explicitly repeated in Friar’s remarks this time.

The Anthropic Factor

A significant part of the CNBC discussion centred on competitive pressure from Anthropic, which is reportedly further along in its own path toward a public listing. Rooney said OpenAI’s rival is “under file” as well, and suggested that whichever company lists first will effectively set the valuation benchmark for an entirely new asset class of AI companies that bankers and investors have not previously had to price. She added that despite Friar’s message to employees about running their own race, there is likely more competitive urgency behind the scenes than the internal messaging let on. Rooney also referenced a degree of personal history between the two companies’ founders, noting a backstory of tension between them, even as both organisations are seen as needing to coexist in a market with enormous capital requirements.

What It Means Going Forward

The CNBC segment framed Friar’s comments as an attempt to keep employees focused ahead of a high-stakes listing process, with Rooney comparing the messaging to a coach telling a team not to look over its shoulder at competitors. With OpenAI now publicly confirming both a confidential IPO filing and a 2027 target, investor attention is likely to sharpen around further disclosures, including any move to convert the confidential filing into a public one as early as next month, CNBC reported.

Source:

• https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/08/19/openai-will-be-a-public-company-in-2027-or-sooner-cfo-friar-tells-employees.html