OpenAI trillion-dollar IPO shocked by variables! SoftBank's $65 billion massive investment return may be postponed, with stock price plunging 13% to the biggest drop in three months.

It was noted that due to concerns that OpenAI might postpone its IPO until next year, delaying the investment return for its Japanese supporters, SoftBank Group's stock price plummeted by as much as 13%. By October of this year, SoftBank's investment in this ChatGPT manufacturing company is expected to reach around $65 billion. Expectations for a massive financial return from OpenAI going public had previously driven SoftBank's stock price to record highs, and last month helped the company's market value surpass Toyota. However, according to sources, bankers providing advice to OpenAI have warned that the volatility of tech stocks could dampen market enthusiasm for an IPO. This led to SoftBank's stock experiencing its biggest intra-day drop in over three months in Friday's early trading session on the Tokyo stock market. Hiroki Takei, a strategist at Resona Holdings, stated that the public listing of OpenAI's stock will provide transparent market valuation for SoftBank's extensive holdings, which include hundreds of private startups. If OpenAI goes public, investors will find it easier to evaluate SoftBank's overall investment portfolio, and this transparency could reduce the heavy discount (group discount) or risk premium applied to SoftBank's stock. He said, "The news of the IPO delay naturally throws cold water on these expectations." The company led by Sam Altman recently submitted an IPO application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Sources revealed that OpenAI has partnered with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to prepare for a listing as early as this fall, but the current schedule adjustment has clearly changed this pace. In a broader industry context, OpenAI and its main competitor Anthropic PBC are actively seeking to go public in order to attract secondary market investors to support their massive capital spending in the field of artificial intelligence chips and data centers. Anthropic was previously considered a laggard in the industry, but with the commercial success of its AI software (especially coding and debugging tools), its revenue has surged this year. The company secretly submitted its listing application shortly before OpenAI. Financially, in a round of financing earlier this year, OpenAI raised $12.2 billion from investors to support its aggressive expansion plans for its AI infrastructure. The overall valuation (including the amount of financing) of this ChatGPT manufacturer reached $85.2 billion in this round of financing, but Altman is actively urging a team of advisers, including bankers and lawyers, to set the IPO valuation target for the company at $1 trillion. This ambitious figure far exceeds the valuation level of its recent round of financing.