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April 8 (Reuters) – OpenAI plans to reserve a portion of its shares from an initial public offering for individual \u200cinvestors, CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC on Wednesday, as the ChatGPT \u200cmaker gears up for a highly anticipated U.S. stock market listing.<\/p>\n
The AI startup is \u200blaying the groundwork for an IPO that could value it at up to $1 trillion and may file with securities regulators as soon as the second half of 2026, Reuters reported last year.<\/p>\n
Friar told CNBC that \u200cthe AI startup started \u2060testing the waters with retail in its latest funding round and saw “really strong demand” from individuals. While \u2060she did not comment on the IPO timeline, she said it’s “good hygiene” for a company of OpenAI’s size to “look and feel and act … like \u200ba public \u200bcompany.”<\/p>\n
OpenAI raised over $3 billion from \u200bindividual investors in its latest \u200cfunding round. It closed the round with $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion.<\/p>\n
The company initially targeted $1 billion from individual investors via private placements through banks such as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, but ended up securing three times that \u200camount in the largest private placement \u200bthose banks have ever done, Friar told \u200bCNBC.<\/p>\n
Large institutional investors have historically \u200bbeen the primary recipients of IPO allocations, with \u200cretail investors typically receiving only 5% \u200bto 10% of \u200bshares in public offerings.<\/p>\n
However, billionaire Elon Musk is planning to allocate as much as 30% of SpaceX’s IPO to individual \u200binvestors – at least three \u200ctimes the usual retail slice.<\/p>\n
SpaceX confidentially filed for a U.S. \u200bmarket debut earlier this month.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Juby Babu in \u200bMexico City; Editing by Anil D’Silva)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n