As the tech mega-IPO race hots up, has OpenAI missed its moment? | AI (artificial intelligence)
As the tech mega-IPO race hots up, has OpenAI missed its moment? | AI (artificial intelligence)
Publish Date: 2026-06-03 05:00:00
Source Domain: www.theguardian.com
A year is a long time in AI. Just 12 months ago, Sam Altman was predicting his company OpenAI would build a super intelligence and fundamentally remake society. Now the boss of the ChatGPT developer is walking back those ideas after failing to make money from ads and erotic chatbots.
Meanwhile, rivals are storming ahead with plans to expand and go public on the stock market, in what is widely expected to be a season of record-setting initial public offerings (IPOs).
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which owns xAI, is going to float this month, while Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday in what the New York Times said could be a “once-in-a-generation” moment for Wall Street. The AI chip designer and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is meanwhile raising $80bn to fund a larger AI infrastructure buildout – in what analysts say is the largest equity fundraising ever.
These flotations – and OpenAI’s, if it happens – will reveal much about the ambitions, and state of, the AI economy. The numbers involved are eye-popping; already there is talk of whether the IPOs themselves might strain limited pools of capital. Questions hang over the progress of the AI infrastructure build-out, and the degree to which AI tools can replace human labour. Some of the biggest questions hang over OpenAI, the “poster child” of the boom.
One might have been forgiven, back in the halcyon days of early 2025, for thinking that money – or at least, the question of a profit – wasn’t everything to Altman.
The OpenAI chief executive was blogging about creating “science fiction” tools that could “massively accelerate scientific discovery,” and “massively increase abundance”. US vice-president JD Vance was reportedly among those reading with concern the doomsday scenario AI 2027, which envisions a company loosely modelled on OpenAI building a super intelligence that destroys humanity.
Vast sums chased these visions of ultimate power; OpenAI announced a $500bn…
