Let’s start with OpenAI’s “glamorous appearance”: a huge loss of 12.3 billion, core executives fleeing, and even price cuts can’t compete with Chinese models?

Just yesterday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar held a company-wide meeting and gave a clear listing timetable for the first time. This leading American AI company plans to IPO in 2027, and it may IPO earlier if its business continues to accelerate. The slides she showed at the meeting were filled with beautiful numbers: this quarter’s revenue run rate increased by 35% quarter-on-quarter, enterprise business run rate increased by 50%, and the number of weekly active users of AI programming and office products exceeded 20 million. But in fact, OpenAI’s hidden worries have emerged and are manifested in many aspects: First, OpenAI’s revenue in the quarter was only US$6.7 billion, an increase of only 18% from the previous quarter, which was lower than some analysts’ expectations; at the same time, operating losses expanded sharply from US$9.3 billion in the first quarter to US$12.3 billion. Second, Anthropic, which has always been regarded as a chaser, had revenue of US$11.6 billion in the quarter, surpassing OpenAI for the first time in history, and it is already far ahead. Third, since 2026, about a dozen heads of departments at OpenAI have resigned, and the most intensive wave is this month. Fourth, although OpenAI announced a significant price reduction for models, Chinese model manufacturers also provide “high-quality and low-price” options. More and more American manufacturers began to hand over their business to DeepSeek or Kimi, and OpenAI’s customers and potential customers were further “cannibalized”. IPO is a new round of financing? At this meeting, OpenAI finally determined the listing schedule. Fryer spoke very restrainedly at the meeting: "IPO is not a finish line, it is a milestone, another round of financing. We raised US$122 billion in March, which gives us flexibility." OpenAI has been preparing for listing for a long time: in June, OpenAI submitted a confidential prospectus to the US Securities Regulatory Commission; in March, it completed a financing of US$122 billion, with a post-money valuation of US$852 billion; it just completed a US$7 billion transfer of old shares this Monday, allowing current and former employees to cash out at a valuation of US$852 billion. According to previous media reports, Sam Ott