OpenAI's chief financial officer has privately raised doubts about chief executive Sam Altman's ambition to take the ChatGPT maker public as early as the fourth quarter of 2026, according to a report by The Information.
Sarah Friar reportedly told colleagues that OpenAI may not be organisationally or procedurally ready for a public listing by late this year, citing significant work still needed on compliance, reporting systems and internal processes.
Altman has been pushing for a Q4 2026 initial public offering (IPO) and has committed the company to spending up to $600 billion over five years on AI infrastructure and computing resources.
Friar has reportedly questioned the scale of those investments in AI servers, particularly given slowing revenue growth and a projected cash burn exceeding $200 billion.
Sources cited by The Information say Altman has stopped inviting Friar to certain key financial meetings with investors, while Friar is believed to favour a more measured approach, potentially targeting 2027 for a public listing.
OpenAI recently secured $122 billion in investment commitments, pushing its valuation to around $852 billion, and completed a restructuring that reduced its dependence on Microsoft.
A successful IPO could value the company at up to $1 trillion, though going public would bring stricter regulatory oversight, mandatory quarterly financial disclosures and sustained investor pressure on profitability.
OpenAI has not confirmed any official IPO timeline and has previously stated that a stock market listing is "not our focus."
The reported tension between Altman and Friar comes as OpenAI faces mounting competition and substantial compute costs, having recently signed a contract with the US Department of Defense following rival Anthropic's withdrawal from a similar deal.