OpenAI's CFO just put an actual date on the company's path to going public.
Sarah Friar told employees at a Wednesday all-hands meeting that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027," with the possibility of moving sooner if the business keeps accelerating.
"The IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another fundraise," Friar said, according to two people familiar with her remarks.
Friar's Timeline, and Anthropic's
OpenAI confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC in June. It hasn't said publicly when it plans to actually debut.
Anthropic has done the same thing. It's confidentially filed its own prospectus and started meeting with potential investors, according to CNBC.
Friar told employees not to panic if Anthropic beats OpenAI to the public markets. She said there's a real chance Anthropic goes public as soon as September, and shrugged it off as a non-issue.
"That's OK, we are running our own race," Friar said.
That framing matters for how OpenAI wants the narrative to go. A confidential filing race between the two most valuable AI labs in the world naturally invites comparison, and Friar's comment reads as an attempt to get ahead of it before employees or the press start keeping score.
The Numbers Behind the Confidence
OpenAI is under real pressure here. The company needs to justify an $852 billion valuation once its books are open to public scrutiny.
The internal numbers Friar showed employees paint an aggressive growth picture. Revenue run rate is up 35% quarter to date, and enterprise revenue run rate is up 50%.
OpenAI's coding and work product tools have hit 20 million weekly active users.
The Wall Street Journal reported OpenAI generated $6.7 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 18% from the first quarter, with an annualized run rate that recently topped $40 billion.
Anthropic's numbers are bigger by comparison. The company told investors its annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, a sevenfold increase from a year earlier, with $11.5 billion in preliminary second-quarter revenue.
Both companies are effectively pre-announcing strong numbers to investors months before any formal roadshow, a sign of how much both need to shape the narrative early given the size of the valuations riding on it.
A Wave of Departures OpenAI Wants You to Ignore
Friar's confident tone comes right after a rough stretch for OpenAI's leadership bench.
Revenue chief Denise Dresser left after just eight months. Longtime executive Brad Lightcap ended an eight-year run days earlier to "start something new."
Product business chief Fidji Simo stepped down in July to focus on recovering from a chronic illness.
That leaves Friar, CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman to project stability while investors are already nervous about competition, the rise of cheaper open-weight models, and SpaceX's volatile stock performance in its first two months as a public company.
Brockman waved off the departures in a CNBC interview Monday.
"I actually think that the difference between OpenAI and other organizations is that we are so much in the spotlight, so every departure gets scrutinized in a way that it doesn't otherwise," Brockman said.
What This Means for Miami
Two of the most closely watched IPOs in tech history could both land within the next year, and Miami's venture and private wealth community will have real decisions to make about exposure to either one, or both.
The revenue gap between the two companies is worth watching closely rather than assuming bigger automatically means safer. Anthropic's larger run rate says something about current momentum, but OpenAI's broader consumer reach and enterprise foothold are a different kind of bet entirely.
Given how concentrated AI-linked public listings have already proven risky elsewhere this year, from SpaceX's rocky debut to South Korea's AI-driven market swings, Miami investors sizing up either IPO should treat the headline valuation numbers as a starting point for due diligence, not a substitute for it.