Initial public offerings (IPOs) can garner a lot of attention, which is particularly true for companies that are already in the limelight. That’s exactly the case with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Its highly anticipated IPO could come as soon as late 2026, and a record-breaking, $122 billion funding round completed in March calculated the company at a whopping $852 billion valuation.

For retail investors worried about getting left behind once the AI company goes public and institutional money pours in from fund managers, we’ve got good news: You don’t need to be a tech titan or a billionaire with an inside track to invest in the company.

Veteran tech investor Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest firm recently invested $240 million in OpenAI, with exposure spread across three of Ark’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs). OpenAI comprises about 3% of each fund’s holdings.

The three OpenAI ETFs — ARK Innovation ETF, ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF — can be bought and traded on regular brokerage platforms, making it easier for retail investors to buy into OpenAI before its IPO.

Prior to this, people who wanted access to pre-IPO shares faced a high bar: Investing in private assets is expensive, illiquid and risky. This is why it’s historically been restricted to sophisticated investors (although the Trump administration has been actively trying to change that by allowing alternative assets in retirement accounts).

But investing pros say there are a number of other, potentially less risky ways you can get exposure to this hot pre-IPO stock. For instance, if you have investments in the Magnificent Seven — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — or other big tech companies that have inked deals with the OpenAI, you already have exposure to the buzzy startup in your portfolio.

Even if you just own index funds within your 401(k) or brokerage account, the complex and symbiotic financial relationships OpenAI has with giant chip makers and hyperscalers means that you also stand to benefit if — or, as many would argue, when — the AI juggernaut reaches its full earnings potential.

How are investors already exposed to OpenAI?

The investments Silicon Valley heavyweights have made in OpenAI commonly take the form of what are called circular financing agreements. These deals have the potential to help startups grow and boost revenue at established tech firms, although some analysts have flagged the risk that these AI financing deals could mask potential weakness in demand. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that OpenAI missed its internal revenue target. (OpenAI disputed the Journal’s reporting.)

Agreements between OpenAI and huge tech firms like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms typically look something like this: The funding company invests a certain amount into a startup; in return, the startup pledges to use that money to buy their goods or services.

OpenAI’s $10 billion investment from Microsoft in 2023, for example, gave it the funds to turn around and buy cloud computing capacity in Microsoft’s Azure data centers.

“It’s capital that’s designed to go back to Microsoft, so… what they’re really getting is $10 billion of cloud credits,” says Michael Brenner, senior research analyst and asset allocation strategist at FBB Capital Partners.

OpenAI has similar agreements in place with Alphabet, Amazon, CoreWeave, Disney, Nvidia and Oracle, among other publicly traded companies. And while circular financing isn’t new, it’s become a huge driver of AI industry growth for a couple of reasons, says Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management.

“There are several layers to it,” he says.

For one, the amount of cash startups like OpenAI are burning through to stay competitive would be difficult if not impossible to raise from other sources, especially at the speed they need to grow their computing power. For instance, that record-breaking March funding round brought Amazon’s investment up to as much as $50 billion.

Secondly, there’s particular appeal for big tech firms investing in companies that rely on its products to grow. These deals generate demand and revenue for the legacy companies and give them a stake in fast-growing, leading-edge startups. In return, those startups get the capital they need to grow and improve their models.

This symbiotic relationship takes on another layer of significance when you consider how OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other large language models are deployed by big tech firms, Ellerbroek says. “They also provide distribution” by integrating them into the cloud-based tech tools that office workers use every day. This gets more people familiar with and using these models.

“The biggest example is Microsoft and OpenAI… Microsoft owns between 25% and 30% of OpenAI, so Microsoft shareholders directly benefit from the success of OpenAI,” he says. When corporations license Microsoft’s suite of office tools — programs like Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook — that include its OpenAI-powered Copilot tool, both companies benefit, Ellerbroek adds.

Although the two companies said in April that Microsoft would no longer have an exclusive license to OpenAI’s intellectual property, the Seattle-based tech giant remains a major investor, ChatGPT’s maker said in a news release.

OpenAI’s $30 billion deal with Nvidia is another good example: The chipmaker’s investment gives OpenAI the money it needs to buy Nvidia’s semiconductors — or buy computing capacity from other tech companies that power that activity with advanced Nvidia chips — that allow it to expand its computing power while also giving Nvidia a revenue stream now that lets it reap the potential benefits of its equity stake later.

“They’re leveraging the hyperscalers for computing capacity, and hyperscalers represent about half of Nvidia’s revenue,” Brenner says.

How to get OpenAI exposure if you aren’t already invested

What all this means in practice, Brenner says, is that most ordinary investors’ exposure to OpenAI right now comes via the startup’s voracious appetite for computing power, which has fueled huge demand for both cloud capacity and processing hardware like chips.

If you have money in mutual funds or ETFs that are invested in large-cap tech stocks, you’re already indirectly invested in OpenAI. Even broad index funds will give you exposure, given big tech’s increasingly outsized market capitalization as a percentage of weighted indices like the S&P 500.

So while you can’t directly invest in the company just yet, there are ways to benefit from its rapid growth, Brenner says. “If you’re interested in getting exposure to OpenAI, step one would be to invest in their supply chain.”

And if you’re a more experienced, hands-on investor, there are ways to get even closer to the action, says Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management.

“There are a lot of ETFs out there, and you can kind of slice up different sectors to get the exposure you want,” he says. “Look at ones that segment out software versus hardware. Right now, I would really be a buyer of some of these hardware names,” he says.

“Obviously, we know Nvidia is the 100-pound gorilla in the room, [but] what we’re finding is more and more data centers are being designed and built using a mix of technologies,” Mulberry says, including products made by Nvidia competitors that don’t cost as much.

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