OpenAI has filed a confidential initial public offering, the ChatGPT maker said Monday, bringing it one step closer to its official market debut.

"We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it," OpenAI said in a statement published Monday on its website. "We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."

Going public will allow OpenAI, which is valued at $852 billion, to inject more cash into its business as the AI arms race heats up.

SpaceX, which owns Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, recently filed for its own IPO, including plans to expand its AI computing power. Shares in the rocket manufacturer are expected to start trading on Friday, in what is set to be the biggest IPO ever.

Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, also filed for its own IPO last week.

A confidential filing allows OpenAI to gather private feedback from regulators before submitting a public-facing document to the Securities and Exchange Commission. That filing, known as an S-1, will contain details about the AI company's finances and specify its investment plans.

OpenAI's filing comes just weeks after a judge threw out a case Musk brought against the company that could have derailed its IPO plans. Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together in 2015.

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