OpenAI wants you to buy its IPO 💰

Welcome back to the Technology newsletter 🤖

OpenAI is gearing up for what could be the biggest tech IPO in years (and it wants everyday investors to get a piece). 

We've also got Meta doubling down on its AI spending habit, TSMC posting monster revenue numbers, and a new mid-tier ChatGPT plan that costs $100 a month.

Let's get into it 👇

💰 Meta signed a new $21 billion deal with CoreWeave for AI computing power that runs from 2027 to 2032, on top of a previous $14.2 billion agreement. That brings Meta's total CoreWeave tab to $35 billion. The data centers will run on Nvidia's next-generation Rubin chips, and both companies' stocks popped on the news. (Bloomberg)

📨 Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed in his annual shareholder letter that AWS's AI business now has an annualized revenue run rate above $15 billion. He also said Amazon's custom chip division (which makes Graviton and Trainium processors) has crossed $20 billion in annual revenue, roughly double what the company reported earlier this year. (Yahoo Finance)

🤝 OpenAI launched a new $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan that sits between the $20 Plus tier and the $200 top-end subscription. The main draw is 5x more access to Codex, OpenAI's coding tool that's been gaining traction with developers. The move looks like a direct response to Anthropic's Claude Code, which has been eating into OpenAI's developer base. (CNBC)

📈 SiFive, a startup that designs chips using the open-source RISC-V architecture (basically an alternative to the ARM chips in your phone), raised $400 million in a round backed by Nvidia. The company is now valued at $3.65 billion and plans to use the money to build data-center-grade processors that could compete with the big players. (Bloomberg)

OpenAI is planning to do something unusual with its initial public offering: let regular investors in on the ground floor. 

CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC this week that the company will "for sure" reserve a chunk of its IPO shares for individual retail buyers, breaking from the typical playbook where big banks and hedge funds scoop up most of the stock before anyone else gets a chance.

The company already tested the waters during its most recent private fundraising round and got way more interest than it expected. 

OpenAI set aside about $1 billion worth of shares for individual investors, and they ended up committing more than $3 billion (oversubscribing by three times). 

That's a pretty clear signal that people want in. 

OpenAI's last private round raised a staggering $122 billion in total and valued the company at $852 billion. It now reports $25 billion in annualized revenue and says ChatGPT has about 900 million weekly users.

The IPO itself could land sometime in late 2026 or early 2027, and OpenAI is reportedly targeting a valuation of around $1 trillion.

If it gets there, it would instantly become one of the most valuable public companies on the planet.

For context, that's roughly in the neighborhood of where Meta trades today. The listing would also mark a dramatic shift for a company that started as a nonprofit research lab just nine years ago and only recently completed its conversion to a for-profit structure.

Giving retail investors meaningful access to a tech IPO this size would be a real departure from recent history. Most big offerings in the past decade (from Uber to Rivian to Arm) were heavily tilted toward institutional buyers, with regular people left to buy shares on the open market after the price had already jumped.

Whether OpenAI's approach actually moves the needle on that dynamic will depend on how large the retail allocation ends up being, but the early signals suggest this isn't just a token gesture.