OpenAI's Third Phase

TL;DR

• IPO filing: Confidential, June 8
• Valuation: $852 billion
• Revenue: $2 billion/month
• Profitability target: 2030 (investors know this)
• Cash burn before breakeven: Over $200 billion
• Cloud commitments: Over $600 billion over 5 years
• Internal target: AI systems doing significant research work by March 2028
• Phase Three goals: Automated AI researcher, economic acceleration, personal AGI for everyone
• Anthropic filing: June 1, 2026
• SpaceX IPO pricing: June 11, 2026

Right after the filing came a blog post outlining OpenAI's "Third Phase".

Phase 1: Research for AGI

Phase 2: Product commercialization with ChatGPT

Phase 3: World domination. JK. Phase 3 is AGI for everyone

But before everyone gets their personal AGI, what even is that?

The people building it have different views on what exactly it means, but Artificial General Intelligence is what the AI industry uses for a hypothetical AI that can match/surpass human cognitive abilities across a wide range of tasks, not just specialized ones like writing content or replying messages. OpenAI calls it "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". They also have an internal profit-based version for lols: an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits.

The timing isn't random, as Big AI is busy this month. Anthropic filed its own confidential IPO on the 1st, SpaceX's IPO is scheduled for the 12th, so all three are racing to grab public market capital. Hence the long blog post with the AI promises/warnings that give investors a reason to dream.

The first IPO will define what investors think AI companies are worth.

There's some internal tension though. The company's CFO Sarah Friar has reportedly questioned whether OpenAI is ready for a 2026 IPO, due to the scale of preparation and financial risks of aggressive spending.

And there's also the cash burn problem. OpenAI doesn't expect to be profitable until 2030. A lot could happen in 4 years, its cash burn could exceed $200 billion before breakeven. And the company has committed over $600 billion to cloud capacity for the next five years, mostly to Amazon and Nvidia who are also its investors.

Still, a lot could happen in 4 years. We'll see.