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

ME News report, April 6 (UTC+8). According to market sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately stated this year that he hopes the company can complete an IPO as early as the fourth quarter. CFO Sarah Friar has told several colleagues that she believes the company will not yet be ready to list in 2026, citing reasons including the workload of the required processes and organizational work, as well as financial risks arising from high-amount commitments to purchase computing power. 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,” whereas she had participated in meetings on the same topic previously.

Since August last year, Friar has stopped reporting directly to Altman and instead reports to Fidji Simo, the head of the application business, breaking the usual practice in large companies where CFOs typically report directly to the CEO. On the financial side, OpenAI has committed to investing more than $600 billion in cloud servers over the next five years, and internal forecasts predict that it will consume 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, forming a circular capital arrangement. Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI to become the preferred AI model for enterprise and developer markets, and OpenAI’s revenue growth has also been slowing.

IPO preparations have quietly started: OpenAI has engaged two law firms, Cooley and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, and has had 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 an IPO plan for the fourth quarter of this year. The two executives later issued a joint statement saying they are “fully aligned on compute strategy.” (Source: ChainCatcher)