The AI dynamos are eyeing the public markets, but some wonder whether SpaceX’s planned June listing will steal their thunder.
By Bailey Lipschultz | Updated on Jun 09, 2026 at 06:27 PM
SpaceX’s plan for a massive initial public offering has been the talk of the investing world this spring. Yet the confetti will barely have been swept off the floor of the Nasdaq when listings from OpenAI and Anthropic PBC get going. The firms, which are among the most influential in artificial intelligence, are expected to go public as soon as the fall.
On June 1, Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO, and OpenAI followed suit a week later. The companies would be hitting the stock market after lucrative stints as private companies. ChatGPT developer OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in March, while Anthropic, creator of the AI model Claude, has raised capital at a valuation of more than $965 billion . At these levels, the companies would each be worth more than corporate giants such as JPMorgan Chase Inc. and ExxonMobil Inc.
The mania surrounding these businesses has captivated private markets, where access to shares is restricted to wealthy investors, financial institutions and employees. But public listings will test whether ordinary investors share the private market’s excitement for the AI dynamos. Despite their huge valuations, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is profitable, and they need massive amounts of capital to pay for the computing power to build and run their models. IPO buyers would be betting that underwriting one of the most costly endeavors in corporate history will ultimately turn rapid sales growth into real profits.
The appeal is twofold: There is expected to be insatiable demand for the shares, and the companies are eager to raise as much money as they can to power their operations. An entry to the public markets would open the door for cheaper — and quicker — debt and equity financing to fund their cash-needy operations.
There also is a sense of competition as the two AI companies anticipate going public on the heels of a June IPO for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company acquired xAI, Musk’s AI venture, in early 2026. SpaceX could seek to raise $75 billion in its IPO, Bloomberg has reported, making it the biggest stock-market debut ever. Despite the lofty expectations, Wall Street is grappling with the possibility that there could be a limit to the amount of cash that investors can deploy within a calendar year.
Both companies have confidentially filed IPO paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Confidential filings are a typical early step on the road to an IPO, as they allow companies to get feedback from regulators while shielding sensitive information from competitors.
Anthropic has picked Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan to work on the IPO, while OpenAI has spoken with the three as well as with Citigroup Inc., Bloomberg News has reported.
In addition to the confidential filing, Anthropic has added to its board an experienced finance executive, Chris Liddell, who helped take General Motors Co. public. Anthropic’s value has soared in private marketplaces as the company has rolled out new AI models and investors bet on a successful IPO at some point. Its AI releases have rattled shareholders in software companies, who fear AI will usurp their products.
OpenAI, after operating primarily as a nonprofit, restructured itself last year into a for-profit business, which could make the company more appealing to investors.
Read more: How SpaceX’s Dream of a Record-Breaking IPO Stacks Up
The pitch for both companies is simple: Own a piece of one of the most important enterprises in a world where AI rules.
For both companies, the appeal centers on rapid revenue growth. OpenAI’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025, more than three times what it delivered in the prior year.
Anthropic is growing even more quickly. The company said it had reached $47 billion in annual run-rate revenue, which estimates revenue for an entire year based on current performance. That’s a steep increase from $19 billion just a few months before, though as private companies, OpenAI and Anthropic might calculate revenue differently.
The key risk for IPO buyers is if expectations around AI’s profit potential turn out to have been inflated. Some market watchers believe the AI frenzy is a bubble that will burst.
Both companies face near-term risks as well. It’s unclear how much more room there is to grow for firms that likely would be hitting the public market with trillion-dollar private valuations.
There are other uncertainties. The Wall Street Journal reported in April that OpenAI failed to meet targets for sales and new users. OpenAI responded that the business is firing on all cylinders.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is locked in a dispute with the Pentagon over military use of the firm’s technology. Anthropic has requested stricter safeguards for any use of AI for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance activities. The White House in turn labeled Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” a rare designation typically reserved for foreign adversaries. Recent meetings between the two parties have indicated that the designation could be reversed, but the uncertainty is hanging over the company. As public companies, Anthropic and OpenAI also could encounter a backlash over fears that AI technology will eventually supplant vast numbers of jobs.
Read more: SpaceX IPO Requires a Leap of Faith in AI, Musk and Mars
The IPOs are expected to reverberate beyond the fortunes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Investors already have piled into companies powering a technology that some expect to transform daily life. The launch of ChatGPT has fueled the spectacular rise in share prices of companies such as Nvidia Corp. that provide chips to OpenAI. Nvidia shares have soared roughly 1,200% since the initial launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, adding $4.8 trillion in market value. Google parent Alphabet Inc. saw its share price roughly quadruple in that period as it oriented its business toward AI. Industrial giant Caterpillar Inc. has posted similar returns as investors bet on suppliers of AI infrastructure.
The combination of rampant growth and investor excitement is likely to result in hefty valuations for both companies. Private market investors have handed OpenAI $122 billion in a funding round that already is bigger than the amount raised in any IPO in history. At the same time, investors in public companies tend to look for credible forecasts of cash flow, and could balk at extremely ambitious growth projections.
One major trade-off of going public is that companies will face much more financial scrutiny and pressure for nearer-term returns than they had as private firms. All their financials will need to be publicly reported, and the companies will be required to report quarterly earnings and face questions from Wall Street analysts.
There also is the volatility that comes with having a share price that moves on any bit of incremental news. The AI boom has minted trillions of dollars in market value, but bad news could trigger a sudden plunge.
OpenAI and Anthropic have wrestled with the competing pressures of commercializing their technology versus proceeding more slowly to ensure the safest possible deployment of products that could change the world, or, some fear, destroy it.
The pressure to meet quarterly earnings forecasts can prompt public companies to prioritize products that make money and pull back on open-ended research. As social media companies , gaming platforms and other businesses have shown, that approach risks prioritizing profits over people and safety.