- OpenAI surpassed $25 billion in annualised revenue in 2026 and is reportedly taking early steps toward a public listing as soon as late 2026
- The company’s last private valuation was $157 billion — but market conditions and IPO structure will determine the actual listing price
- Indian retail investors cannot directly participate in US IPOs through Indian brokers — indirect access is available through international fund-of-funds and specific US-equity mutual funds
- The risk profile is unusual: OpenAI has massive revenue but also massive compute costs — profitability at scale is unproven
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is reportedly preparing for a public listing that could be one of the largest technology IPOs in history. This is what Indian investors need to understand about the company’s financials, the IPO structure, how to gain exposure if listed, and the significant risks involved.
When OpenAI eventually goes public, it will be one of the most anticipated technology listings since the era of Google, Facebook, and Alibaba. The company behind ChatGPT has built the fastest-growing software product in history, reaching 800 million weekly active users by late 2025 and surpassing $25 billion in annualised revenue in 2026. For Indian investors who use the product daily and want to own a piece of it, the IPO question has become increasingly urgent.
The honest answer is that OpenAI’s path to an IPO is neither straightforward nor imminent in a fully certain sense. But the direction of travel is clear enough to understand the opportunity and the risks now, before the actual listing.
OpenAI’s Financial Reality
OpenAI’s revenue trajectory is extraordinary by any measure. The company went from approximately $1.6 billion in revenue in 2023 to $3.4 billion in 2024 to over $25 billion annualised in 2026 — a growth rate that very few technology companies have ever sustained. ChatGPT’s consumer subscriptions, the API business serving developers and enterprises, and the Codex product for developers are all growing simultaneously.
The complexity is on the cost side. OpenAI’s compute costs — the expense of running the servers and AI chips that power its models — are enormous and growing. The company spent an estimated $7 billion on compute in 2024. As it trains more powerful models and serves more users, these costs scale with revenue rather than declining as a percentage of it in the way traditional software businesses do. Whether OpenAI can achieve durable profitability at scale remains the central financial question that any IPO investor must answer for themselves.
Competitor Anthropic is approaching $19 billion in annualised revenue, suggesting the market for advanced AI models is large enough to support multiple major players. But the race for model capability requires continuous reinvestment at a pace that makes the path to profitability genuinely uncertain.
How Indian Investors Can Access OpenAI Stock
Indian retail investors cannot participate directly in US IPOs through Indian brokers under current SEBI and RBI regulations. The Liberalised Remittance Scheme allows Indians to invest up to $250,000 per year in overseas assets, but direct US IPO participation requires a US brokerage account, which most Indian retail investors do not have.
Indirect access is available through: international fund-of-funds that invest in US technology stocks (several Indian AMCs offer these), US-equity ETFs listed in India (there are Nifty US 500 and S&P 500 index funds that will hold OpenAI post-IPO), and global technology sector funds. Once OpenAI is listed on a US exchange, it will be included in major indices over time, making index fund exposure the simplest route for most Indian investors.
The Risk Profile: What Makes This Unusual
OpenAI is not a conventional technology IPO. Most software IPOs involve companies with established profitability or a clear path to it. OpenAI’s path is contingent on continued AI adoption, continued model improvement, and the ability to convert raw capability into sustainable business models faster than its costs grow. The company also has an unusual governance structure — it operates as a capped-profit entity with a non-profit parent — which has implications for shareholder rights that a conventional IPO investor would not face.
3 Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What valuation could OpenAI list at?
OpenAI’s last private funding round in late 2024 valued the company at $157 billion. At $25 billion in annualised revenue, that represents approximately a 6x revenue multiple — modest by recent AI company standards. Public market valuations for high-growth AI companies have ranged from 8–25x forward revenue. A conservative public market valuation might be $150–200 billion; an optimistic one could exceed $300 billion depending on profitability trajectory at time of listing.
Q: Should Indian investors try to buy OpenAI stock on listing day?
IPO day purchases of high-profile technology listings have historically underperformed buying the same stock 6–12 months after listing, once the initial euphoria settles. The data on buying IPOs at opening price — particularly for oversubscribed, high-profile listings — consistently shows that patient buyers do better than day-one buyers. This is not investment advice; conduct your own research before any investment decision.
Q: Does Anthropic (the company behind Claude) plan to IPO too?
Anthropic has not announced IPO plans as of May 2026. The company is approaching $19 billion in annualised revenue and remains privately held, backed by Google and Amazon among others. An Anthropic IPO is a future possibility but not currently on a specific announced timeline.
OpenAI’s trajectory from a non-profit research lab to a $25 billion revenue business in under a decade is the fastest institutional scaling in technology history. For Indian professionals who use its products daily and understand the technology’s direction, the investment interest is entirely logical. The caution worth adding is specific to the IPO moment itself: the gap between a company’s genuine quality and the price at which public market euphoria values it on listing day is often significant. India’s own technology IPO history — Paytm, Zomato, Nykaa in their initial years — provides relevant context. The business quality of OpenAI is not in question. The price at which that quality gets offered to public market investors is the variable that will determine whether early IPO buyers are rewarded.
