Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI, told a Wall Street Journal technology conference that the company could be prepared for an initial public offering in 2027, citing growing enterprise revenue as a key factor.
Brockman characterized the first and second quarters of 2026 as "pretty rough" for OpenAI and acknowledged that the company was not initially part of the conversation in agentic coding — an area where competitor Anthropic has won adoption with Claude Code. He noted that OpenAI previously had Codex but it had not been widely discussed.
Despite the slow start to the year, activity accelerated by the third quarter: OpenAI saw a 70% quarterly increase in annualized revenue, which Brockman linked to the enterprise side of the business roughly doubling. He emphasized that this growth reflected accumulated investments rather than a single quarter’s events.
According to Brockman, the majority of OpenAI’s revenue now comes from enterprise customers; previously that segment represented about 30% of total revenue. He said consumer revenue has continued to grow, but the enterprise segment has "really taken off," and pointed to deals with large clients such as J.P. Morgan Chase as examples of the types of contracts the company is now winning.
Brockman also described lessons the company learned while selling to enterprises: helping customers identify the most important milestones achievable with AI, building trust, and showing that OpenAI can be a reliable long-term partner. He recalled that a year earlier the company was still perceived primarily as a consumer business and potential clients frequently questioned OpenAI’s commitment to enterprise.
"A year ago, we weren’t even really in the enterprise game, right? We were really perceived as a consumer company, and a lot of the companies we’d start talking to would say, ‘Is OpenAI really committed to the enterprise?’" Brockman said. "But it’s so different today."
Brockman added that OpenAI has signaled this year it intends to go public when it believes the timing is right, and that he feels "extremely good about the business" given the progress made in 2026.
Why this matters
The shift toward enterprise customers changes OpenAI’s revenue mix and could influence the timing and valuation of a potential IPO. The reported 70% quarterly growth in annualized revenue by Q3 2026 and the move from roughly 30% to a majority enterprise contribution indicate the company is increasingly dependent on—and successful at—selling AI solutions to large organizations.
