Before its IPO, OpenAI is already selling to the public
Cathie Wood-led ETFs let the ChatGPT maker reach retail investors without the obligations of going public.
Retail investors won’t have to wait until OpenAI’s IPO. As part of its historic funding round, which now totals $122 billion, the company said that it will offer some of its shares in several exchange-traded funds for the first time, through funds managed by Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest.
The upcoming monster IPOs of companies like OpenAI and SpaceX have revived criticism that retail investors have long been kept out of some of the biggest technology successes, as VC-backed companies remain private longer.
“This announcement is a direct response to the private market’s tension between enormous investor appetite for top startups and very limited supply,” says PitchBook senior research analyst Emily Zheng. “The approach is deliberately selective. By routing individual participation through banks and ARK’s funds rather than directly onto the cap table, OpenAI can say yes to a wide range of investors without the complexity and administrative overhead.”
OpenAI’s move is the latest in a series of developments aimed at giving public investors access to private companies. Robinhood debuted its closed-end Ventures Fund I on the New York Stock Exchange, offering exposure to private companies such as Databricks, Stripe, and ElevenLabs. After a bumpy debut, Robinhood’s fund is trading only slightly above its list price of $25 per share.
That said, OpenAI also recently sold about $3 billion in shares to the wealthy individual clients of three “very large banks,” Axios reported. And despite the company’s warning last year, some individuals have likely been able to nab a slice of OpenAI through special-purpose vehicles. And in a nod to the growing discourse about artificial intelligence’s potential winners and losers, the company said the offering will give “more people the opportunity to share in the upside economics of OpenAI and the AI era.”