April 8 (Reuters) - OpenAI plans to reserve a portion of

its shares from an initial public offering for individual

investors, CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC on Wednesday, as the

ChatGPT maker gears up for a highly anticipated U.S. stock

market listing.

The AI startup is laying the groundwork for an IPO that

could value it at up to $1 trillion and may file with securities

regulators as soon as the second half of 2026, Reuters reported

last year.

Friar told CNBC that the AI startup started testing the

waters with retail in its latest funding round and saw "really

strong demand" from individuals. While she did not comment on

the IPO timeline, she said it's "good hygiene" for a company of

OpenAI's size to "look and feel and act ... like a public

company."

OpenAI raised over $3 billion from individual investors in

its latest funding round. It closed the round with $122 billion

in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion.

The company initially targeted $1 billion from individual

investors via private placements through banks such as JP

Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, but ended up securing

three times that amount in the largest private placement those

banks have ever done, Friar told CNBC.

Large institutional investors have historically been the

primary recipients of IPO allocations, with retail investors

typically receiving only 5% to 10% of shares in public

offerings.

However, billionaire Elon Musk is planning to allocate as

much as 30% of SpaceX's IPO to individual investors - at least

three ​times the usual retail slice.

SpaceX confidentially filed for a U.S. market debut earlier

this month.