OpenAI Files Confidentially for IPO, Joining Anthropic in Trillion-Dollar Wall Street Race

Now I'll write the article.

Two AI giants, one week, a $4 trillion test of Wall Street

OpenAI confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, the ChatGPT maker said on June 8, joining rival Anthropic in a rush toward public markets that could reshape the AI investment landscape.reuters The company submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC but disclosed neither size nor timing, saying in a blog post that it expected the filing to leak so "we're just announcing it."cnbc Reuters reported OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, with a debut that could come as early as September — though the company cautioned a listing "may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company."reuters +1

The filing lands a little more than a week after Anthropic, the maker of Claude, confidentially filed its own paperwork following a $65 billion funding round that valued it at $965 billion.reuters Elon Musk's SpaceX is set to go public this week at a $1.75 trillion valuation, meaning three of tech's most watched names could debut within months — a concentration of high-stakes offerings markets haven't seen since the dot-com boom.techcrunch

The financials investors will be forced to confront

OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion post-money, and it has raised more than $180 billion while burning cash to secure compute and build infrastructure.cnbc In March it told investors it was generating $2 billion in monthly revenue and growing roughly four times faster than the companies that defined the internet era, but it does not expect to be profitable until 2030.reuters The burn is steep: OpenAI projects spending tens of billions on computing power for AI research alone, and by its own projections won't generate more cash than it spends for at least four more years.techcrunch

Anthropic offers a rosier counterpoint, saying it is close to its first quarterly profit.techcrunch That divergence matters competitively — Anthropic's disclosure will set a valuation comp that constrains how OpenAI can price its own offering, and one PitchBook report has characterized OpenAI as overvalued relative to its fundamentals.techcrunch

A scramble for scarce capital

Bankers warn the blockbuster offerings could soak up capital that might otherwise flow to smaller deals. "What OpenAI does not want is for the public market capital to exhaust itself," said Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson, noting SpaceX and Anthropic are ahead of it in line.reuters BCA Research estimates the coming pipeline includes companies worth more than $4 trillion combined, equal to roughly 6% of current S&P 500 market cap.businessinsider

The shift could also reorder existing AI winners. Investors who bought hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon for indirect exposure will soon be able to own pure-play AI stocks directly — and may "fund those purchases by trimming existing holdings," one strategist warned.businessinsider A May jury verdict against Musk's lawsuit cleared a key legal overhang, but governance questions from Altman's 2023 ouster still loom over the offering.reuters +1