OpenAI and Anthropic have spent years racing for talent, money, and the most powerful AI models. Now they’re racing for Wall Street.
Anthropic’s confidential IPO filing has turned the rivalry between the two frontier labs into a new contest: which AI giant will hit the public markets first.
Going first could mean a cleaner shot at investor demand, employee liquidity, and the chance to define how Wall Street values the AI boom. But it also means taking the first hit from public scrutiny and giving OpenAI a chance to study the market’s reaction before making its own move.
Last month, Business Insider and other outlets reported OpenAI was preparing to file a confidential S-1 with the SEC. Then, Anthropic jolted the tech world Monday morning when it announced it has filed a confidential draft S-1 for what is expected to be one of the largest IPOs in history.
Because it is confidential, it is possible that OpenAI also filed its S-1 and did not announce it. The company did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.
On Polymarket, Anthropic is now an 82% favorite to go public first, which is a big advantage, at least according to conventional wisdom.
“It gets first crack at public investor money, liquidity for employees and early backers, and might command a premium while AI hype is fresh,” Mike Alves, founder of VIDA Vision Fund, told Business Insider. “The market might only have appetite for one massive AI IPO at a time, and the second one risks looking like a copycat or facing fatigue, especially if the first one pops then dips.”
Page Hedly, who worked at OpenAI in the late 2010s and now runs the AI safety watchdog Guideline AI Standards, told Business Insider that the framing of an IPO is an advantage for the first-mover. Hedly said the first to list can suggest what matters “in a way that benefits what they do well and downplays what they perhaps do poorly.”
Is going public first really an advantage?
There is also a strong argument to be made that waiting is better, according to Harrison Rolfes, a senior late-stage company research analyst at Pitchbook.
“Anthropic just volunteered to absorb all the disclosure risk first, and OpenAI now has a free option to watch how institutional investors react to audited frontier AI financials before committing to its own price,” Rolfes wrote in a research note Monday. “If Anthropic’s margins disappoint, OpenAI restructures its story quietly before its roadshow. If the deal is oversubscribed, OpenAI rides the wave with a tailwind and no downside.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined CNBC directly after the Anthropic announcement on Monday and downplayed the competition, saying he doesn’t think there’s a competition to be the first to debut.
“I think there is a race to deliver the best technology and build the best business,” Altman said. “But, you know, going public is a financing event, and I don’t think that’s one that we’re focused on the timing of. We’ll do it when we think it makes sense.”
The CEO also said he expects there to be so much demand for AI that it will support a “system of multiple providers,” not a winner-take-all champion.
Altman spoke cautiously about the IPO with staff in May, The Information reported, telling them that filing for the IPO was different from listing, and that the company wouldn’t actually hit the market until it was ready.
If OpenAI is already deep into its own SEC review and bookbuilding, it could be too late for it to adjust, according to Rolfes.
“The two deals may be close enough in timing that OpenAI cannot meaningfully course-correct before it has to commit to a price range,” he wrote.
