OpenAI is in the process of preparing a potentially game-changing initial public offering (IPO) targeted for 2026, which could establish the company’s valuation at $1 trillion as competition in the AI landscape intensifies, according to a report by Reuters.

This move to go public comes with an aim to raise about $60 billion in capital, resting on insights from three anonymous sources in the know. The IPO application is anticipated to reach US securities regulatory bodies by late 2026, potentially ahead of OpenAI’s previously set goal of launching in 2027.

Despite the preparations, an OpenAI representative stated that the timeline for the IPO is not finalized, emphasizing the company’s commitment to the advancement of artificial general intelligence (AGI) instead. “We are building a sustainable enterprise while ensuring that the benefits of AGI are accessible to all,” the spokesperson remarked.

The magnitude of the possible IPO reflects increasing interest from institutional investors in AI ventures, particularly as OpenAI, after attaining a valuation of $500 billion through a secondary share sale on October 2, earned the title of the world’s largest startup.

In conjunction with this news, OpenAI staff reportedly sold a combined $6.6 billion of their stocks to significant corporate stakeholders, elevating OpenAI’s valuation above that of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently stands at $400 billion.

Chinese AI Competitors Surpass ChatGPT in Crypto Trading

Given its expanding budget, OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, has faced stiff competition in a specific domain: autonomous cryptocurrency trading. During a recent trading competition, Chinese AI systems, DeepSeek and Qwen3 Max, momentarily surpassed both ChatGPT and Grok.

As of October 22, DeepSeek emerged as the only AI to register a positive trading return, achieving around 9%, whereas ChatGPT-5 suffered a loss of 66% and ranked last.

The outcomes are surprising, especially considering the lesser expenditure involved in training DeepSeek, which cost approximately $5.3 million, as compared to OpenAI’s staggering $5.7 billion allocated for research and development in the first half of 2025.

According to Nicolai Sondergaard, an analyst from Nansen, the effectiveness of various AI models, including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, can potentially be enhanced through better prompts and refined training data. He noted, “If all models were given identical prompts and guidelines for trading, the variations in performance likely stem from the training datasets utilized by each model.”