Sarah Frier, CFO of OpenAI, speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2026.
Oscar Molina CNBC
OpenAI plans to reserve some shares for retail investors in what is expected to be a blockbuster initial public offering.
Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC that the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence giant began experimenting with retail in its latest round of funding and has seen “very strong demand” from individuals.
Frier told CNBC on Wednesday that OpenAI will “certainly” have a retail stake when it goes public.
“AI needs to earn trust in everything we do, which is part of why retail specifically appeals to me,” Frier said. “Everyone needs to be involved. It’s not just a small group that gets involved and everyone else gets left behind.”
She pointed to her time as CFO of what is now known as Square. blockthe fintech company offered a direct sales program to small business owners and sellers in its IPO. She also highlighted OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk’s model: tesla And SpaceX.
SpaceX plans to go public as early as June, reportedly with nearly 30% of its shares available to retail buyers.
“Everyone wants to own a piece of a rocket company. I want everyone to own a piece of ChatGPT. That helps when it comes to consumer brands,” Frier said.
OpenAI has raised $1 billion from private investors through a private placement with the following banks: JP Morgan, morgan stanley and goldman sachs In recent rounds.
The company ultimately raised three times that amount in the largest private placement ever undertaken by these banks, Frier said. One bank experienced an outage after giving investors access to its data room to investigate OpenAI’s financial health.
People familiar with the matter recently told CNBC that OpenAI is in talks with bankers about going public as early as the fourth quarter. Friar did not comment on the IPO timeline, but said it would be “hygienic” for a company of OpenAI’s size to “look, feel and act like a publicly traded company.”
OpenAI was valued at $852 billion, up from the $110 billion the company announced in February after completing a record $122 billion round. Unlike Silicon Valley companies like Stripe, OpenAI won’t remain private indefinitely.
“At our size, it doesn’t make sense to increase capital permanently,” she said. You want to start cutting back from stocks. ”
He pointed to other benefits of being public, noting that OpenAI could begin leveraging convertible and investment-grade debt to fund its limitless demand for computing. The company already plans to spend $600 billion on semiconductors and data centers over the next five years.
“Computing is a huge competitive weapon,” Frier said, calling it “the most important asset you can have.”
“Being able to deliver more compute is a true customer experience outcome that leads to increased revenue and cash flow, and we want to make sure we’re always ready to tap into larger markets,” she said.
corporate growth
Part of OpenAI’s computing strategy is serving enterprise customers.
Chief Revenue Officer Dennis Dresser, Mr. Friar and previously Slack CEO, said that part of the business is on track to account for half of its revenue by the end of this year.
“Enterprise now represents 40% of our revenue, and we’re on track to reach parity with consumer by the end of 2026,” Dresser, who just completed his first 90 days on the job, told CNBC on Wednesday. “I have never seen this level of confidence spread so quickly and consistently within the industry.”
Dresser said the most advanced companies have moved from using AI for “traditional productivity” purposes to “actually managing teams of agents and performing tasks on their behalf.”
Dresser said Codex now has more than 3 million users. Fryer added that at the beginning of the quarter, that number was “nearly zero.”
