OpenAI CFO privately questions 2026 IPO timing, Altman excludes them from key financial meetings

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately stated this year that he hopes the company can complete an IPO as early as the fourth quarter; CFO Sarah Friar has told several colleagues that she believes the company is not yet ready to go public in 2026, citing reasons such as the required processes and organizational workload, as well as the financial risks associated with large-scale compute commitments.
Internally, Altman has repeatedly excluded Friar from financial decision-making. In recent months, he did not invite Friar to participate in discussions with a top investor about server procurement, with an attendee describing her absence as “noticeable and awkward,” especially since she had been involved in previous meetings on the same topic. Since August last year, Friar no longer reports directly to Altman, instead reporting to the head of application business, Fidji Simo, breaking the usual practice of CFOs in large companies reporting directly to the CEO.
On the financial front, OpenAI has committed to investing over $600 billion in cloud servers over the next five years, with internal forecasts predicting that more than $200 billion in cash will be consumed before achieving positive cash flow. The $122 billion funding commitment announced this week mainly comes from Amazon and NVIDIA, which are also OpenAI’s cloud server and chip suppliers, forming a circular capital arrangement. Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI to become the preferred AI model for enterprises and developers, and OpenAI’s revenue growth is also slowing.
Preparations for going public have quietly begun: OpenAI has engaged the law firms Cooley and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and has had preliminary discussions with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley’s IPO teams. Altman privately expressed a desire to go public earlier than Anthropic, which is currently discussing an IPO planned for this fourth quarter. The two executives later issued a joint statement saying they are “completely aligned on compute strategy.”