OpenAI Loses $1.22 Per Dollar, Still Chases a $1T IPO

On May 22, 2026, OpenAI confidentially filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC, a move that Fortune, CNBC, Reuters, Axios, and Bloomberg all confirmed within hours of each other. The goal is clear: list in September at a valuation that could reach $1 trillion. But pull up the first-quarter numbers, and you find a contradiction — this is a company currently losing $1.22 for every dollar of revenue it brings in.

How big this IPO actually is

OpenAI’s current private valuation sits at $852 billion, and this listing is meant to push that number all the way to $1 trillion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the underwriting. Under the standard timeline, the confidential filing submitted May 22 should convert to a public S-1 by late July, followed by an investor roadshow in August and formal pricing and listing in September — the confidential filing stays sealed until roughly 15 days before the roadshow begins.

Just how bad the numbers are

The first-quarter financials are what actually made people wince: OpenAI generated $5.7 billion in Q1 revenue, with a non-GAAP adjusted operating margin of negative 122% — in other words, for every dollar it earned, it lost another $1.22, adding up to a $6.95 billion loss for the quarter. Stretch that out to the full year and the picture doesn’t improve much: OpenAI is on pace to hit roughly $30 billion in revenue for 2026, but at the same loss ratio, the full-year loss could approach $36.6 billion.

Is user growth stalling out

There’s a subtle signal in the user numbers too. OpenAI’s average weekly active users (WAU) stood at 920 million in February, but slipped to an average of 905 million across the full quarter — not still climbing, but ticking down slightly — and OpenAI had originally set a target of reaching 1 billion weekly active users by the end of 2025, a goal it ultimately missed. That’s part of why this earnings report is being described as evidence that growth has started to stall. On the paying side, subscriber count reached 55 million by the end of Q1, putting the conversion rate at roughly 6%.

OpenAI isn’t the only one chasing a trillion-dollar listing

According to Investing.com’s analysis, zoom out and OpenAI isn’t the only company gearing up to test the “trillion-dollar club” right now — SpaceX is under the same microscope, with both companies facing public markets’ first real test of whether these sky-high valuations actually hold up, on roughly the same timeline. Filing confidentially, for what it’s worth, is a standard mechanism the SEC offers issuers: it lets a company begin regulatory review of its financials and disclosures without having to make the details public right away, only converting to a public filing closer to the actual roadshow. In other words, the numbers now circulating publicly were dug up early by reporters — OpenAI didn’t choose to disclose them itself.

What Microsoft’s stake is actually worth

According to multiple financial outlets’ reporting on the S-1 filing, on October 28, 2025, OpenAI completed its restructuring from a nonprofit into a Public Benefit Corporation, a move that also formally established Microsoft’s ownership stake under the new structure: on a fully diluted basis, Microsoft holds 26.79%. At a valuation range of $852 billion to $1 trillion, that stake alone is worth somewhere between $228 billion and $270 billion — enough on its own to rank among the most valuable corporate holdings in the world.

What comes next is whether the market buys it

A company claiming a valuation that could reach $1 trillion, while its own financials say it loses $1.22 for every dollar earned — reconciling those two facts for public-market investors is the real test the upcoming roadshow has to pass. September’s pricing, in a sense, is the moment the world’s investors collectively grade that contradictory equation.

It’s also worth remembering that a confidential S-1 filing is a long way from an actual listing — it’s the first step in the IPO process, not a promise. In practice, companies can delay or withdraw a listing at any time based on market conditions or other factors, so whether OpenAI actually rings the bell in September remains, for now, a target rather than a done deal.