OpenAI joins Anthropic in confidential IPO filing

On Monday, OpenAI submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a confidential filing—an IPO process allowing companies to keep financial details private initially. The move follows a similar filing by rival Anthropic. These moves signal that 2026 could be a blockbuster year, with SpaceX also expected to debut at a $1.75 trillion valuation, potentially bringing three closely watched tech companies to market within months of each other.

Both AI companies are preparing for public debuts while managing vastly different financial profiles. While OpenAI has built scale with around 900 million weekly active users, it faces intense financial scrutiny.

• OpenAI: Last valued at $852 billion post-money, the company secured $122 billion in a recent funding round—the largest in Silicon Valley history—including $3 billion from retail investors. However, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI missed its own targets for new users and revenue, and projects burning $85 billion in 2028. Secondary market data from April recorded its valuation at around $880 billion.
• Anthropic: The rival recently raised a $65 billion funding round, with another $36 billion in chip-allocated debt potentially on its way. Anthropic has asserted it is close to achieving its first quarterly profit, and its valuation recently surged to $1 trillion on the secondary market platform Forge Global.

According to David Shapiro, founder and CEO of OpenVC, Anthropic’s secondary market appreciation has outpaced OpenAI’s this year, rising 123% year-to-date compared to OpenAI’s 11.3%. Still, Shapiro noted that OpenAI’s stock “experienced a slight pop over the last few days, indicating investors may be pricing both as the ‘dual winners’ of the broader LLM race,” referring to Large Language Models.

To succeed publicly, OpenAI must navigate unresolved governance questions. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab focused on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) before releasing ChatGPT in 2022, the company experienced severe internal disruption in 2023. The board temporarily ousted CEO Sam Altman over a lack of transparency and concerns about whether he was committed to the firm’s mission of benefiting all humanity. Though Altman returned and co-founder Ilya Sutskever departed, these questions remain.

OpenAI also faces litigation. Florida has sued OpenAI and Altman, accusing them of harming children by providing information to school shooters, offering guidance on self-harm, and fostering addiction among young users. Additionally, Elon Musk’s 2024 lawsuit over an alleged promise to keep the company a nonprofit was recently dismissed. Meanwhile, political donations have drawn scrutiny, including a $12.5 million contribution from president Greg Brockman to a pro-AI political action committee.

Why it matters

The confidential IPO filing allows OpenAI to prepare for public markets without immediate disclosure of financials, signaling a potential 2026 blockbuster year for tech IPOs alongside rivals like Anthropic and SpaceX.