OpenAI still plans to go public next year despite election shift

OpenAI still plans to sell shares to the public next year, and its chief financial officer says the midterm elections did not change that. Sarah Friar spoke on CNBC on Friday. "I don't think there was something that dramatically changed for us," she said.

What an IPO means

An IPO, or initial public offering, is when a private company sells its shares to the public for the first time. After that, ordinary investors can buy them. Friar said that is part of the appeal. "Why should it just be limited to institutions?" she asked, meaning large investors like funds. Anthropic, OpenAI's main rival, is also being watched for a possible IPO, perhaps as soon as this month.

The political backdrop

Democrats won big in the midterms. They flipped control of Congress and flipped the governor's offices in Texas, Georgia and Ohio. Those candidates ran on promises to rein in new data center development. Data centers are the huge buildings full of computers that power AI. OpenAI is trying to rebrand them as "compute campuses."

Friar said OpenAI will keep investing in them to meet customer demand, and that this means it will keep raising money. She also said the company will work to "build trust" in the communities where it builds.

OpenAI's new pledge

On Thursday, OpenAI announced what it called a new standard for responsible AI infrastructure. It says it will:

• Pay the full cost of the electricity it uses, plus any needed grid improvements
• Drop non-disclosure agreements with public officials, with narrow exceptions
• Publish data on the jobs it expects to create

The business numbers

Friar said OpenAI's third-quarter revenue grew 70%. Sales to businesses, called enterprise sales, doubled. She described the latest private funding round as having a $1.25 billion pre-money valuation, but she likely misspoke and meant $1.25 trillion. In March, OpenAI said it closed a round at an $852 billion post-money valuation.

What is not known yet

No IPO date has been given beyond "sometime next year." The material also does not say how the new governors will act on data centers, or how the pledge will play out in local communities. Those answers will shape both the stock offering and the power and jobs questions near data center sites.