Author:Climber, CryptoPulse Labs
On June 9, OpenAI officially confirmed that it had secretly filed an IPO application with the U.S. SEC. At the same time, the company's long-term technology roadmap was revealed for the first time, indicating that by 2028, AI will undertake most of its own research and development work.
On the surface, this appears to be just a routine listing move, but behind it lies a shift in the logic of the AI industry. Technological competition is turning into capital competition, which will further evolve into an ecosystem war.
For the crypto market, this event may not just be a piece of tech news, but the beginning of a new capital narrative.
I. From Chatbot to AI Empire: The Commercial Evolution of OpenAI
Ten years ago, few would have imagined that an artificial intelligence research lab would grow into one of the world's most-watched tech giants.
In 2015, OpenAI was founded as a non-profit research institution with the goal of ensuring that the development of artificial intelligence truly benefits humanity rather than being controlled by a few organizations. At that time, OpenAI resembled more of an academic lab than a commercial company.
The real game-changer was the explosion of ChatGPT in 2022. After its launch, ChatGPT reached hundreds of millions of users in just a few months, becoming one of the fastest-growing consumer products in internet history. From that moment, OpenAI began its transformation from a research institution into a commercial behemoth.
Today, OpenAI's business spans multiple directions. The most easily perceived by the general public is the ChatGPT product, which has evolved from a simple chat tool into a comprehensive AI assistant, including search, content generation, image generation, code writing, AI Agent capabilities, and more.
In addition, another major business for OpenAI is enterprise services. A large number of companies use its large model capabilities through API calls, including customer service systems, automated office tools, development tools, and enterprise-level AI solutions.
More notably, its strategic focus has already begun to shift. The latest roadmap reveals that OpenAI aims to develop automated AI researchers in the future—leveraging AI to develop the next generation of AI models. Simply put, future AI will not only participate in work but may also engage in technological creation.
Among all its operations, what burns the most cash is not software but infrastructure.
Training AI models requires massive amounts of GPUs, operational processes need data centers, and future Agent systems will require even larger-scale computing networks. OpenAI previously disclosed plans to invest approximately $600 billion in AI infrastructure by 2030.
Therefore, today's OpenAI is no longer just a chatbot company but more like a super platform spanning AI applications, cloud services, computing power, and future infrastructure.
However, alongside this high growth lies immense pressure. Increasing model training costs, unproven profit models, executive departures, and organizational structure controversies have also raised external concerns about its long-term development capabilities.
Rapid growth coexisting with massive expenditures—this is perhaps the most accurate depiction of OpenAI's current state.
II. The Escalating AI War: Technology Competition is Turning into a Cash-Burning Battle
Many might wonder: Why is OpenAI rushing to go public right after completing a financing round exceeding $100 billion? The reason is simple—the AI industry is incredibly capital-intensive.
In the traditional internet era, a company's main expenses might come from servers and labor costs. But in the era of large models, the largest expenditure has shifted to computing power costs.
Training a more powerful model requires hundreds of thousands or even millions of GPUs for computation. Once the model is live, sustained inference services are needed to support user usage. With the advent of the Agent era, future computing power consumption may even grow exponentially.
OpenAI's public roadmap mentions the ambition to achieve AI collaborating with human researchers to complete most R&D work by 2028. This means that in the future, not only will humans be using AI, but AI itself will also start consuming vast amounts of computing resources.
And the capital market may be the only sufficiently large pool of funds available right now.
Secretly filing an S-1 form is essentially a preparatory move. It allows the company to undergo SEC review without disclosing extensive financial details while retaining more flexibility for a future listing.
More importantly, OpenAI's competitors are already in motion. Anthropic has taken the lead by filing its IPO application and surpassed OpenAI's valuation in its latest funding round.
Simultaneously, Musk's xAI continues to expand through the X and SpaceX ecosystems, while Google and Meta are also investing resources at a frenzied pace.
The entire AI industry has begun to enter a state resembling an arms race.
In the past, the competition was about model capabilities; now, it's about capital, computing power, ecosystems, and user scale. Compared to its competitors, OpenAI's biggest advantage doesn't come solely from technology.
First is user access advantage. For many ordinary users, ChatGPT has almost become synonymous with AI. Second is the developer ecosystem. A vast number of startup projects and enterprises are built on the OpenAI API system, creating a strong network effect. Lastly is brand advantage. Similar to the cognitive barrier Google formed during the search era, OpenAI has already established itself in the public's mind.
However, after going public, the company will also face new challenges. Previously, OpenAI dealt with investment institutions; now, it will face the entire capital market. Before, the story was about the future; now, the market will focus more on profits, revenue, and financial data.
This is a threshold that all super unicorns must cross.
III. After OpenAI Rings the Bell, Who Will Become the Biggest Winner in Crypto?
For the crypto market, what truly deserves attention in OpenAI's IPO is not its stock price, but the shift in capital logic. Over the past few crypto bull markets, the core narratives have almost always originated from the external world.
DeFi in 2020, NFTs in 2021, later RWAs, and AI Agents in recent years—these are essentially reflections of changes in the real world onto the crypto market.
OpenAI's listing may signify that the AI narrative is entering a new stage. Previously, market hype focused more on the application layer of AI, such as AI chat, AI assistants, and AI Agent projects. But future market attention may gradually shift to AI means of production.
Therefore, the first to benefit might be the AI computing power sector. As GPU resources become increasingly expensive, the importance of decentralized computing networks is rising. More and more projects are attempting to build distributed computing markets using idle GPUs.
Projects like Render, Bittensor, Akash, and io.net fall under this logic. If future AI demand continues to explode, these projects may regain capital attention.
Another potential beneficiary is the AI Agent sector. OpenAI has explicitly proposed plans for automated AI researchers. This means that future AI will not only be responsible for content output but could autonomously perform complex tasks.
The crypto world is naturally suited for building AI economic systems, so related projects may continue to attract market interest.
Additionally, the AI data layer and the combination of AI with RWA could become new directions. In the future, vast amounts of computing power assets, data centers, and AI infrastructure will require financing, and on-chain assetization might emerge as a new trend.
Of course, it's worth noting that OpenAI's listing could also create a capital siphon effect.
If a large amount of capital starts flowing toward AI supergiants, some high-risk capital might flow out of the crypto market. Thus, the true beneficiaries may not be all AI-themed tokens, but rather those projects with real businesses, genuine demand, and infrastructure capabilities.
Conclusion
Over the past few years, many believed the core of the AI revolution lay in the models. But it's becoming increasingly clear that what truly determines victory may not be the models themselves, but who possesses more capital, more computing power, and a larger ecosystem.
OpenAI's secret IPO filing, on the surface, is just a listing move. But behind it, it represents the AI industry entering a new era. For the crypto market, perhaps the question truly worth focusing on in the future is not whether AI will change the world, but who will become the water, electricity, and coal of the AI era.
Because in every gold rush, the ones who truly make money are often not the prospectors, but those who sell the shovels.
