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

ME News Message, April 6 (UTC+8), according to market sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately stated this year that he hopes the company will complete an IPO as early as the fourth quarter; CFO Sarah Friar has also told several colleagues that she believes the company is not yet ready to be listed in 2026. The reasons include the workload involved in the required processes and organizational work, as well as financial risks stemming from commitments to high-cost compute power procurement. 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 to participate. One attendee described her absence as “noticeable and awkward,” and therefore she took part in earlier meetings on the same topic. Since August last year, Friar no longer reports directly to Altman and instead reports to Fidji Simo, head of the application business, breaking the usual practice at large companies in which the CFO reports directly to the CEO. On the financial front, 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 reaching positive cash flow. The $122 billion funding commitment announced this week is mainly 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 enterprises and developers, and OpenAI’s revenue growth rate has also begun to slow. IPO preparations have quietly begun: OpenAI has engaged the law firms Cooley and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, and has held preliminary discussions with 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 this fourth quarter. The two executives later issued a joint statement saying they are “fully aligned on compute strategy.” (Source: ChainCatcher)