OpenAI's Spud AI + IPO Just Shocked Everyone

OpenAI's SPUD AI and IPO just shocked everyone and in the last five days they've made more dramatic moves than most companies make in a year. A new model, a killed product, a collapsed billion dollar deal and an IPO that could be the biggest in history. Let's go through all of it. So start with SPUD that's the internal codename for OpenAI's next major AI model.

OpenAI completed the pre-training of SPUD and Sam Altman told employees in the model that it could really accelerate the economy. He's calling it a very strong model. The release is expected within a few weeks. Nobody knows exactly what's in it yet.

OpenAI hasn't disclosed specifics like parameter count or multi-modal capabilities but OpenAI employees have reportedly been told that SPUD features a completely novel capability not seen before and it's probably not called GPT-6. Whether it ends up named GPT-5.5 or GPT-6 is currently unknown. SPUD is just a placeholder name like for example how Google used to name Android releases after desserts. The real name drops when it ships.

But here's what we do know about what it's built for. OpenAI is working on a unified super app that will integrate ChatGPT, Codex and a browser called Atlas into a single platform. SPUD is almost certainly the engine powering that. So if you run a business and use ChatGPT right now this is the version that's meant to make it do a lot more inside one app without jumping between tools.

Think of it like this. Right now if you want to write content, research competitors and brief your team you're switching between different windows, different tools, different subscriptions. The super app idea is that ChatGPT handles all of that in one place with SPUD as the brain behind it. That's the pitch.

Whether it delivers we'll see. Now why did they kill Sora to get here? OpenAI completely shut down Sora on March 24th 2026 just 15 months after its public launch and only three months after signing a licensing deal with Walt Disney. The Disney deal was enormous on paper.

Disney had agreed to license iconic characters including characters from Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars to OpenAI and to take a 1 billion dollar stake in the startup. The deal was entirely in stock warrants rather than a cash licensing fee so no money had changed hands. The moment Sora got killed the deal collapsed with it. Now why did they shut it down?

It's because the numbers are brutal. Sora's total lifetime revenue came to just 1.4 million dollars from 9.6 million downloads. A coverage rate of less than 1% of actual operating costs. Monthly downloads dropped to 32% in December 2025 and another 45% in January 2026.

It was a money pit. Full stop. Employees described Sora as a drag on resources. The freed up compute is now going towards spud.

So OpenAI took all of that computing power that was running a failed video app and redirected it into the next model. That's a trade they just made and it's not just Sora for example. OpenAI also killed instant checkout, its in-chat shopping feature and shelved the adult content mode that Sam Altman had been promising since October 2025. Three products dropped in one week all pointing in the same direction.

Fujisamo, OpenAI's CEO of applications told employees the company is orienting aggressively toward high productivity use cases and pausing all side quests. If you're running a business and using AI tools you're probably asking what does any of this actually mean for me? Here's the answer. OpenAI is making a deliberate bet that the future of AI is business productivity, coding, automation, and really getting real work done.

Their stated goal is to take 900 million users and turn them into high compute users. High compute means people using AI heavily, being power users daily for serious output, not just asking it to write a bio or a funny cat meme. If that model lands, ChatGPT becomes a stronger tool for running your business. Better automations, faster output, more capability inside one app.

And if you want to make sure you're one of the people who actually knows how to use it when spud drops, that's exactly what we coach inside the AI Profitable Boardroom. Right now we've got 2,700 business owners learning how to use tools like ChatGPT to get more clients and automate their operations with step-by-step tutorials specifically built for running a business with AI. You also get four weekly coaching calls and 30-day roadmaps so you know exactly what to implement and in what order. And if you want coaching on how to use whatever spud turns out to be, get ahead before most people even know it's out.

Link in the comments description or go to the AIProfitableBoardroom.com. Now let's talk about the IPO because this is the bigger story underneath everything. Reports point to an IPO as soon as Q4 2026 with the public offering expected to value OpenAI at more than 1 trillion dollars. ChatGPT crossed 20 billion dollars in annualized revenue in 2025.

But here's what makes this moment interesting. OpenAI recently closed a funding round that grew to 120 billion dollars including 30 billion from SoftBank, 30 billion from Nvidia and 50 billion from Amazon. They raised 120 billion dollars in a single private round and they still need to go public because the costs are absolutely enormous. Inference costs for example, the cost of actually running AI responses at scale are running higher than expected and the more people use ChatGPT the more it costs to run.

Bear in mind they've got a lot of free users so quite often they don't even monetize a lot of the audience that they have and they need access to public markets to keep funding the infrastructure. OpenAI completed a corporate restructuring in October 2025 converting its for-profit segment into a public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group PBC. The OpenAI foundation retained a 26% stake. That's restructuring which is clearing for a path for an IPO.

It removed the non-profit constraints that had been limiting how much capital they could actually raise and the shift in language from Sam Altman tells you everything. In September 2025 he said going public wasn't the focus. By October he said it was the most likely path forward. That's a complete reversal in 30 days.

So what changed? Basically the capital requirements got very real and the competition got very fierce. OpenAI is racing towards its IPO against Anthropic which is also planning a public offering. Two of the biggest AI companies in the world both heading to public markets in the same window.

Meanwhile there's internal pressure too. So you got OpenAI's partnerships with companies including Disney and Nvidia which have either fizzled or they've failed to live up to their initial promise. With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly frustrated by OpenAI's lack of business discipline. And Apple now plans to let rival chatbots including Claude and Gemini integrate with Siri.

OpenAI had that slot. They lost it. So here's the honest picture of where OpenAI is right now. They have 900 million active weekly users.

They have a new model coming that the CEO is calling economy accelerating. They have a super app which is a strategy that could consolidate all of their tools into one and they're heading toward a potential trillion dollar IPO. And it's all at the same time. So they've killed three products in a week, lost a billion dollar Disney deal, lost the Apple Siri deal and are burning through cash faster than expected.

A company can hold all of those things at once. The question is which of them defines the next 12 months. My read is that Spud matters more than anything else right now. If that model is genuinely a step up, if it's what Allman says it is, then the super app becomes real, the IPO gets easier to sell and the narrative totally shifts.

If it underwhelms, all the cleanup in the world will not help them. So for you as a business owner the move is the same regardless. Get good at using AI tools now before the next version drops, before whatever and whoever else in your competition, your industry understands how to use it. Because Spud is going to be something that gives people a real advantage if it's as good as everyone's saying it is.

And so you want to have an advantage over everyone else who's lagging behind and not really improving in that way. So the gap between the people who know how to use AI and the people who don't is only getting wider. Tools are getting more powerful. The people who already have the reps in will use them better and faster.

If you want to make sure you're on the right side of that gap, the AR Profit Boardroom is where to start. We've got 2,700 business people inside there with daily tutorials built around business use cases, 30-day roadmaps, a prompt library and a member map so you can connect with people locally who are doing exactly the same as what you're trying to do. And we cover new model releases as they drop including whatever Spud turns out to be. Link in the comments description or go to the ARProfitBoardroom.com to check it out.

Spud is coming, the IPO is coming, and OpenAI is making its biggest strategic bet of its existence right now. All-in-one productivity, all-in on business users, all-in on becoming the tool that runs your work. Whether that pays off or not, we'll find out in the next few weeks. Thanks for watching.