OpenAI CFO privately questioned the timing of the 2026 IPO, and Altman excluded him from key financial meetings.

MeNews · 2026-04-06T07:05:11+00:00

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that he hopes to go public before the fourth quarter of this year, but CFO Sarah Friar believes the company will only be ready by 2026. The company has committed to investing $600 billion in cloud servers, which will put significant pressure on future cash flow, and Friar has been excluded from discussions with top investors. Internal executive disagreements continue, and preparations for going public have already begun, with initial discussions held with law firms and investment banks.

MeNews

2026-04-06 07:05:11

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ME News update, April 6 (UTC+8). According to market sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately said this year he hopes the company can complete its IPO as early as the fourth quarter; CFO Sarah Friar also told several colleagues internally that she believes the company will not yet be ready to go public in 2026, citing reasons including the amount of process work and organizational workload required, as well as the financial risks brought by the costly AI compute procurement commitments. Internally, Altman has repeatedly excluded Friar from financial decision-making. In recent months, when he discussed server procurement with a top investor, he did not invite Friar; one attendee said her absence was “noticeable and awkward,” meaning she participated in earlier meetings on the same topic. Starting in August last year, Friar stopped reporting directly to Altman and instead began reporting to Fidji Simo, head of the applications business, breaking the usual practice at large companies where the CFO typically reports directly to the CEO. On the financial front, OpenAI has committed to investing more than $600 billion over the next five years in cloud servers. Internal projections say it will burn more than $200 billion in cash before achieving positive cash flow. The $122 billion funding commitment announced this week mainly comes from Amazon and Nvidia. These two companies are also OpenAI’s cloud server and chip suppliers, creating a circular capital arrangement. Anthropic has already surpassed OpenAI as the preferred AI model for enterprise and developer markets, and OpenAI’s revenue growth rate is also slowing. IPO preparations have quietly begun: OpenAI has retained the law firms Cooley and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, and has held preliminary discussions with the IPO teams at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Altman privately said he hopes to go public earlier than Anthropic, which is currently discussing its IPO plan for the fourth quarter this year. The two executives later issued a joint statement saying they are “fully aligned on the compute strategy.” (Source: ChainCatcher)

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