A Pre-IPO Investing Guide for OpenAI: SPVs, Proxies and ETFs

OpenAI can do everything, it seems. One thing it can’t do is sell you a slice of its stock.

The San Francisco-based startup has rocketed from obscurity to headline news since launching ChatGPT in 2022. Today, its software writes code, drafts presentations and converses like a person, all while inspiring trillion-dollar bets across Silicon Valley and Wall Street, despite rising bubble concerns dampening the euphoria.

Yet for all that excitement, one inconvenient fact remains: Normies can’t actually buy it.

OpenAI is privately held and famously complex, structured as a capped-profit entity whose backers are promised only limited upside. The result ...