Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO on June 1, 2026, beating OpenAI to the punch. The maker of the Claude chatbot submitted its registration to the SEC before its larger rival, despite widespread predictions on prediction markets that OpenAI would move first. Both companies could debut on public markets as early as autumn 2026.
Who Filed First
Anthropic, which develops the Claude chatbot and the Claude Code coding assistant, submitted its confidential S-1 filing to the SEC on Monday, June 1. OpenAI is expected to follow within days or weeks. The sequence surprised observers: prediction markets had broadly favored OpenAI as the first mover. As Gil Luria of DA Davidson put it in comments cited by Reuters: “It’s a race to go public before the capital runs out.” Confirmation came directly from the company’s own channels: recent posts by @AnthropicAI on X.
Why Now
Functionally, the numbers make the urgency clear. Anthropic closed a $65 billion funding round in late May 2026, according to Reuters, pushing its valuation above $965 billion. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in March 2026, per Bloomberg. Two massive private companies burning through capital at extraordinary rates, both looking to public markets as the only pool deep enough to sustain them.
There’s a strategic dimension too. Whichever company sets the valuation template for an AI lab first effectively sets the price benchmark for the entire sector. Anthropic is betting on enterprise: the company serves more than 300,000 business clients and runs on an estimated annualized revenue run rate of around $26 billion. For more on the AI-finance intersection, see our pieces on GPT-5.5 and agentic AI in banking and AI agents paying in USDC, both covered in our dedicated AI section.
Valuations of the Three Major Private AI Labs (billions of $)
Valuations of the Three Major Private AI Labs (billions of $)
Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg. Valuations at different dates (Anthropic May 2026, OpenAI March 2026, xAI January 2026)
Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg. Valuations at different dates (Anthropic May 2026, OpenAI March 2026, xAI January 2026)
When Could Anthropic Actually List?
No official date has been set. The filing is confidential, meaning the financial details remain sealed until Anthropic chooses to make them public, as permitted under the SEC’s confidential registration procedure. Realistic timelines point to autumn 2026, with OpenAI potentially listing in the same window. That would place two of the largest tech IPOs in history within months of each other, coming just after SpaceX generated its own headlines this spring.
Winners, Risks, and the Crypto Contrast
Early investors and employees holding stock options stand to benefit most. The broader risk sits with the sector’s own narrative. Anthropic’s rise through 2026 has already rattled software and IT stocks, as investors grew nervous about increasingly autonomous AI tools. A public listing puts these labs under market scrutiny where income statements matter as much as vision.
The ripple effects reach crypto too. AI tokens have moved with the sector’s mood swings, as seen when AI tokens rose while Bitcoin fell. Competition among AI models stays fierce, from DeepSeek beating Bitcoin in a trading challenge to Alibaba’s push with Qwen 2.5. The contrast with the rest of digital finance is sharp: while AI sprints toward Wall Street, Bitcoin ETFs are experiencing record outflows.
Reuters, which broke the news, covered the filing extensively in posts on X.
One asymmetry defines the moment. OpenAI, according to Bloomberg reporting, is targeting one of the largest IPOs in history, with a potential valuation up to $1 trillion. Months ago, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar described a listing as far from immediate plans. The wind shifted. Anthropic filed first, OpenAI is chasing, and the timeline belongs to whoever exhausts their capital first. This race isn’t about products. It’s about runway.
