US EditionOpenAI Will Reserve Portion of IPO Shares for Retail Investors, CFO Tells CNBC
Sarah Friar said OpenAI saw strong retail demand in its latest funding round and plans to give individual investors a larger IPO allocation.
- Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC Wednesday that OpenAI will reserve a portion of shares for individual investors in its upcoming IPO, citing "really strong demand" from retail participants in its latest funding round.
- OpenAI initially targeted $1 billion from individual investors but secured over $3 billion, the largest private placement those banks have ever done, reaching a post-money valuation of $852 billion.
- Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser reported enterprise business now accounts for 40% of revenue and is on track to reach parity with consumer by year-end. Friar called the IPO move "good hygiene" for the company to "look and feel and act... like a public company."
- Friar highlighted the retail-friendly model used by Elon Musk at Tesla and SpaceX, noting SpaceX is expected to allocate 30% of shares to individuals. "I hope everyone wants to own part of ChatGPT," Friar said.
- Accessing public markets allows OpenAI to tap investment-grade debt to fund its growing compute needs, as the company plans to spend $600 billion over the next five years on data centers and semiconductors.
12 Articles
12 Articles
OpenAI plans to reserve a portion of its shares for individual investors in what is expected to be a successful initial public offer, according to CNBC. Financial director Sarah Friar stated that the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence giant began to spot the ground with the retail sector in its latest round of financing and observed a "very strong demand" from individuals. OpenAI will "no doubt" reserve a share for retail investors when…
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This week we continue our series on the top 5 VC-funded deals in AI. Even as the breadth of venture capital activity took a dip this week, a pair of extraordinary announcements kept up the overall momentum from prior weeks. The biggest announcement, per FinSMEs, came from San Francisco-based OpenAI, which raised $122 billion, for the first time extending participation “to investors through bank channels, raising over $3 billion from individual …
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