OpenAI Stock Forecast: Valuation, IPO Timing and Scenarios

An OpenAI forecast is not a price forecast at the moment, it is a valuation forecast. Because no share price exists, all we can do is estimate which company value an IPO is likely to ask for and which revenue would have to carry that value. I do not name price targets on purpose. Who owns OpenAI today and how much of it you get through Microsoft or SoftBank is covered in our guide to OpenAI stock.

Within three weeks the timetable became clear twice. On 19 August CFO Sarah Friar told staff that OpenAI would be a public company in 2027, and earlier only if growth stays strong, CNBC reported. On 12 September Sam Altman ruled out 2026 in an interview with Fortune and pointed to the debate about AI safety, Reuters reported.

Formally there is only a confidential filing. In June 2026 OpenAI submitted a draft prospectus to the SEC. On 9 October 2026 I searched the SEC's EDGAR company search for the form type S-1 again, as on 13 and 29 September. Result: no match. Without a public prospectus there is no price range, no share count and no ticker, so there is no price per share either.

These valuation marks replace the price levels that do not exist yet. $1.5 trillion is what OpenAI considers appropriate, according to the New York Times in September 2026. About $1.4 trillion before the new money (pre-money) is the valuation in the talks about a new round of at least $30 billion, reported by Bloomberg on 29 September. $1.2 trillion is the offer that investors made in September. $965 billion is Anthropic in May 2026, the rival's yardstick. $852 billion is the last confirmed valuation, from the round of 31 March 2026, including the money raised then (post-money). $500 billion was the value in October 2025; since then it has risen by about 70 percent.

The decisive figure is the ratio of valuation to revenue. The price-to-sales ratio tells you how many times its annual revenue a company costs. For private companies without a share price, you use the valuation of the last funding round.

All revenue figures are preliminary. OpenAI does not publish audited accounts. According to CNBC, revenue in 2025 was $13.1 billion. For the second quarter of 2026 OpenAI reported about $6.7 billion to its investors, according to the Wall Street Journal. The run-rate is one month's revenue times twelve, so it is a projection and not annual revenue.

On the reported figures OpenAI has the higher multiple of the two candidates. With quarterly revenue scaled up to a year, OpenAI costs about 32 times revenue and Anthropic about 21 times. These are reported, unadjusted multiples. Against the run-rate the figure falls to about 21 times for OpenAI and 15 times for Anthropic, because Anthropic reached $65 billion at the end of July and OpenAI $40 billion, CNBC reported. Against 2025 revenue the figure rises to 65 times.

The higher offers would make the calculation even tighter. At $1.2 trillion OpenAI would cost about 45 times its scaled-up quarterly revenue, at $1.5 trillion about 56 times. If you pay this price, you are betting on revenue that rises sharply again before the first listing. Our Anthropic stock forecast works through the same question for the rival.

On 8 October a new figure arrived, and it changes the comparison. OpenAI told investors that its run-rate for September was almost $50 billion, according to Reuters; the Financial Times reported it first. At $852 billion that is about 17 times. At $1.4 trillion it would be about 28 times, or about 29 times if exactly $30 billion of new money were added (about $1.43 trillion after the round; the terms are not settled). Earlier, investors had heard of almost $70 billion for the same month of September. Both are September estimates under different counting rules, not a drop in revenue. According to Reuters, the gap came mainly from an attempt to make OpenAI's figure comparable with Anthropic's.

The two companies do not count revenue the same way. OpenAI does not book sales through cloud partners such as Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud as revenue, Anthropic does. According to a Reuters analysis, such sales made up half of Anthropic's revenue last year. So part of OpenAI's higher multiple is an accounting effect, and how large the gap would be on one definition cannot be said today. Even audited prospectuses will not settle this alone: a fair comparison needs the same periods, the same accounting rules and a reconciliation of both figures.

On top come commitments that do not show up in revenue. According to Microsoft, OpenAI has committed to buy additional cloud services worth $250 billion. The company is not profitable. How heavily these commitments weigh against revenue will only show in the audited prospectus.

The graphic shows the six calculations of 29 September side by side. It groups them by revenue measure. The longer the bar, the more you pay for one dollar of annual revenue. All are reported, unadjusted figures, and the new September run-rate is not yet in it.

Two scenarios, clearly separated. No price targets, because there is no price. Only the logic behind the two paths.

I am watching these drivers as I keep this analysis up to date. They decide whether the valuation turns into a share price that holds. In my view the growth rate and the Anthropic share price weigh most, because both act directly on the valuation.

The safety debate set the timetable. Altman explicitly named AI safety as the reason for skipping 2026. The trigger was an incident in July in which OpenAI models, according to the company, left an isolated test environment and got into systems of the Hugging Face platform, Cointelegraph reported. New rules can change the pace and the cost of model development.

The Anthropic IPO sets the first public price. It is the first listing of a company of this kind. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the date moved from October to November, so that the third-quarter figures are available first.

The growth rate decides the higher multiple. At the staff meeting of 19 August, Friar's slides showed a 35 percent rise in the run-rate for the quarter so far, according to the CNBC report cited above. If this pace holds, the gap in the reported multiples to Anthropic shrinks.

The cost of computing power decides when OpenAI makes a profit. The commitments to Microsoft and other providers run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. They decide when OpenAI turns profitable.

Stable leadership is a signal investors watch. In August 2026, former chief operating officer Brad Lightcap and, a few days later, chief revenue officer Denise Dresser announced their departures.

The legal situation is calmer but not closed. On 18 May 2026 a jury found Elon Musk's lawsuit filed too late, and the judge dismissed his claims, Spectrum News reported. Musk's lawyers have announced an appeal.

The most honest part of this forecast comes from our own archive. We followed the SpaceX IPO from the first day and recorded the daily prices.

The figures in the order in which they came. First listing on 12 June 2026 at an issue price of $135, four days later a high of $225.64, then a low of $104.83. The stock ended the week to 2 October at $158.96. Our SpaceX stock forecast follows the chart week by week.

The lesson is uncomfortable and simple. In the first weeks of a giant issue, allocation, mood and lock-ups decide the price, not the business. Expect the same with OpenAI.

Anthropic is the test run that OpenAI can watch. Both companies filed confidentially in June, Anthropic one week earlier. If Anthropic goes public in November as reported, there will be months of price history before an OpenAI IPO in 2027. These prices will shape OpenAI's price range more than any analyst estimate.

There is no price forecast for OpenAI for 2027, because the issue price and the share count are missing. What can be put into context is the revenue that a valuation of $1.2 trillion would need.

An example shows the scale. Suppose the run-rate doubles from almost $50 billion in September to about $100 billion by the IPO. Then $1.2 trillion would be about 12 times revenue, much less than today. If the run-rate stays at $50 billion, it would be about 24 times. The doubling is an assumption for this calculation, not an expectation of OpenAI.

The date can slip further. As early as October 2025 Reuters reported that OpenAI was considering a filing from the second half of 2026 at the earliest, with Friar aiming for 2027. The leadership has since confirmed exactly that plan. If you plan with 2027, still allow for another year of delay.

There is no reliable OpenAI forecast for 2030. There is no price, no audited figures and no share count. What can be described is the range of possible developments.

With the public prospectus, this valuation forecast becomes a price forecast. These five items are the first I will look up there. Audited revenue and loss show how solid the preliminary figures from press reports are. The share count and the price range give the price per share and so the first real price level.

Three more items decide what a new shareholder actually gets. How the OpenAI Foundation secures its control sets the voting rights of new shareholders. The contracts with Microsoft (revenue share, cloud commitments and the special rules around artificial general intelligence) act directly on the margin. And the lock-up periods set when employees and early investors may sell, which moves the price after the first listing.

You can find the prospectus yourself. It will appear in the EDGAR register of the SEC, and the agency's full-text search shows it on the day it is filed. For an overview of the company, the Wikipedia entry is a good starting point.