OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees in a Slack message Monday that the company could go public within a year — but the exact timing depends on how much money it needs for compute infrastructure and how fast AI can recursively self-improve.
Altman noted that if AI reaches a point where it can autonomously develop the next generation of models — a scenario known as recursive self-improvement — the world could change in unexpected ways, and staying private might actually be advantageous. On the flip side, OpenAI's massive hunger for computing power could push it to IPO sooner. The company is currently negotiating a lease for a large data center in Ohio that would require hundreds of billions of dollars to fund NVIDIA chips and facility costs.
Alongside the IPO plans, OpenAI is preparing to release a new model this month, codenamed 5.6. Chief scientist Jakub Pachocki told staff in a memo that the model represents a significant leap over the current flagship, GPT-5.5.