OpenAI gets set to go public: can we entrust the financial markets with ChatGPT and AI?
OpenAI gets set to go public: can we entrust the financial markets with ChatGPT and AI?
Publish Date: 2026-04-21 06:47:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is gearing up to launch its Initial Public Offerings (IPO) this year. This financial manoeuvre would represent a pivotal shift for a project originally designed for the “common good” towards a market-driven logic. Established in 2015, OpenAI started out amidst growing anxiety regarding artificial intelligence (AI). Founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, the tech company adopted a non-profit structure and made no secret of its goal to develop AI that is “beneficial to humanity” and prevent it from remaining in the hands of a few dominant players.
This ambition distinguished it from tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon, which were built on proprietary models and rent-seeking effects.
In contrast, OpenAI intended to champion general public interest by emphasising open research and sharing knowledge. However, this orientation – symbolised by its name – quickly collided with a structural constraint: the astronomical cost of generative AI.
Massive costs
Unlike traditional software, where marginal costs tend towards zero (for example, the millionth copy of Windows costs Microsoft nothing), generative AI requires massive infrastructure.
Every interaction mobilises computing resources, energy, and specialised equipment. A standard ChatGPT query, consisting of one question and one answer, costs between $0.01 and $0.10. Similarly, generating a high-definition image can cost between $0.10 and $0.20. While these amounts seem negligible in isolation, they become staggering when scaled to the billions of daily queries seen in 2026.
This is explained by the underlying infrastructure, particularly the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) supplied by players like Nvidia. These chips can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and several dollars per hour via cloud access.
OpenAI, like its competitors, depends on tens of thousands of these GPUs running continuously in massive data centers. According to some…
