IPO also seeking to beat OpenAI to market, Anthropic aims to seize AI 'pricing power'

Original Author: Long Yue, Wall Street CN

Anthropic filed first, pushing the competition with OpenAI from models, revenue, and valuation to the pricing test of the public market.

Anthropic announced on Monday that it has confidentially submitted an application for a U.S. IPO, moving ahead of its competitor OpenAI in the listing process. In a statement, Anthropic said the filing "gives us the right to choose to go public once the SEC completes its review" and emphasized that "the proposed initial public offering will be subject to market conditions and other factors."

This is not yet a formal public offering. According to a Reuters report, Anthropic's listing could potentially occur as early as this fall, but it did not disclose the offering size or terms. The significance of a confidential submission is that the company can advance its IPO preparations while temporarily keeping sensitive financial details shielded from competitors and the public.

This has suddenly made the IPO race among AI large model companies more tangible. Previously, the market was more focused on who had the stronger model or more users. Now, the question becomes: who will first face public market scrutiny, and who will first set a price for "frontier AI companies"?

This filing will test whether investor enthusiasm for AI can withstand public market validation, and it will also determine which company will establish a valuation template for the high-growth AI industry.

OpenAI has not yet followed suit with its own filing. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated he "is not focused on the potential IPO timeline," saying the company "will go public at the right time."

But the market wasn't betting on this sequence. On prediction markets, most participants previously expected OpenAI to submit its IPO application before Anthropic.

IPO Window Open, but Capital is Not Limitless

Anthropic's race against time is driven by a very real market window.

Data from Dealogic shows that the IPO market has regained momentum in recent weeks. As of May 26, global IPO proceeds reached $87.5 billion, the highest for the same period since 2021.

Currently, the IPO window is clearly open. AI chip company Cerebras surged 68% on its first trading day last month. According to FactSet data, among companies with valuations exceeding $10 billion at the time of listing over the past five years, only digital design platform Figma, which rose 250% on its debut last year, had a higher first-day gain.

But an open window doesn't mean unlimited capital.

Notably, SpaceX is also advancing a mega-IPO, aiming to raise $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation, potentially trading within two weeks. If SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI were to list in quick succession, the U.S. stock market would need to absorb several mega-cap tech assets simultaneously.

"Filing shortly after SpaceX allows Anthropic to capitalize on strong investor interest in AI and growth stocks while the window remains favorable," Kat Liu, Vice President at IPO research firm IPOX, told Reuters.

"Compared to SpaceX, Anthropic's valuation ask doesn't look as aggressive when viewed in isolation," she added.

"There's only so much oxygen in the room," said Patrick Healy, founder of Issuer Network. "SpaceX will consume a massive amount of capital. The second mover will be in a better position than the third."

"The combined capital needs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic will be very significant and could disrupt the capital markets, so going public earlier would be a huge advantage," said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson.

Filing First Means Seizing the Narrative, and Assuming the Risks

The advantages of going public first are straightforward: set the price first, raise capital first, and provide liquidity for employees and early investors first.

But going first also has a cost: disclose finances first, face institutional investor scrutiny first, and expose the true cost structure of an AI company first.

"The conventional reading is that Anthropic just gained a narrative advantage by filing first," said Harrison Rolfes, a senior analyst at PitchBook.

But he offered another perspective: "The unconventional reading is that OpenAI actually got the better outcome: Anthropic voluntarily assumes all the disclosure risks first. OpenAI can now freely observe how institutional investors react to audited financial data of a frontier AI company before deciding its own pricing."

This statement hits the crux of the AI company IPO. The public market isn't just looking for an "AI story"; it will also examine revenue quality, compute costs, cloud service revenue shares, cash burn, customer concentration, and profit margins.

According to a Wall Street Journal report citing academic research, IPOs often cluster within an industry, and companies that list later in the cycle typically underperform their earlier-listing counterparts. The report explains that companies with deeper moats and higher quality tend to go public earlier, followed by a wave of imitators.

But being first doesn't guarantee success.

In 2019, Lyft went public before Uber, but its post-IPO stock performance lagged, directly impacting Uber's listing two months later. Uber subsequently lowered its valuation target, but its stock still fell after the IPO.

The report also noted that Facebook's stock lost more than half its value within three months of its 2012 IPO, as the market worried about its ability to adapt to the mobile advertising shift. Facebook later proved its business model, but other companies considering listing, including Twitter, ultimately had to wait.

This means Anthropic's first-mover advantage could either give it pricing power in the AI IPO space or make it the first major model company to have its books dissected by the public market.

Why Anthropic: Revenue, Valuation, Profit Narrative are All Shifting

Anthropic's confidence to move forward now is linked to its financial changes over the past few months.

As reported by Wall Street CN, Anthropic's annualized revenue has approached $45 billion. OpenAI's annualized revenue has just surpassed $30 billion, currently estimated at around $33 billion. By this measure, Anthropic's revenue is at least 35% higher than OpenAI's.

This change has been rapid. Reports indicate that at the end of 2025, Anthropic's annualized revenue was only $9 billion, less than half of OpenAI's. In the first five months of this year, Anthropic's revenue grew roughly fivefold; over the same period, OpenAI's revenue grew over 50%.

The revenue structures of the two companies also differ. OpenAI's revenue primarily comes from ChatGPT subscriptions; Anthropic relies more on selling API access to enterprises for AI coding and other white-collar workflows.

For the public market, these two revenue types will be compared. Subscription revenue is evaluated based on user scale and retention, while enterprise API revenue is judged on client stickiness, usage frequency, and unit economics.

In terms of valuation, Anthropic has also overtaken OpenAI.

Reuters reported that Anthropic completed a $65 billion funding round in late May, achieving a post-money valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI's valuation. OpenAI's latest valuation from March this year was $852 billion.

Anthropic's valuation has also risen rapidly. In February this year, Anthropic was valued at $380 billion when it raised $30 billion. By late May, the valuation had more than doubled. The latest funding round included investors such as Blackstone, Brookfield, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, General Catalyst, and Insight Partners.

Anthropic's rapid rise earlier this year impacted software and IT stocks, as investors feared that more autonomous AI tools would change traditional business models and accelerate industry disruption.

Regarding profitability, the gap draws more market attention.

According to The Information, Anthropic is expected to achieve an operating profit of approximately $559 million in the second quarter, with an operating margin of about 5%.

OpenAI, however, remains deeply unprofitable. The report stated that OpenAI's operating loss margin was as high as 122% in the first quarter, even after excluding significant items like stock-based compensation. Based on the report's calculations, OpenAI's operating loss for the quarter was at least $7 billion.

The primary cost pressure stems from compute power.

OpenAI predicted earlier this year that it would burn through about $25 billion in cash annually, with AI server rental costs reaching $32 billion. Additionally, OpenAI must share 20% of its total revenue with Microsoft, an agreement lasting until 2030. If this year's revenue reaches the previously forecasted $30 billion, the payment to Microsoft would be about $6 billion.

Anthropic is not immune to cost pressures. It also shares revenue with its cloud partners. Its revenue reporting metric includes all sales made through other cloud service providers, a portion of which is ultimately returned to those partners.

Anthropic's current profitability also carries risks. As revenue grows rapidly, the company needs to significantly increase server resources, which could push it back into losses.

These are the areas the public market will probe: How fast is revenue growing? Are compute costs rising faster or slower? How much of total revenue ultimately goes to partners? Are enterprise clients truly retained, or are numbers inflated by short-term AI enthusiasm?

This IPO Race Will Ultimately Become a Public Market Stress Test

Looking at the timeline, Anthropic has already accelerated the pace.

From a financial narrative perspective, it has also presented a combination that is easier for the public market to digest: higher annualized revenue, a higher latest valuation, and at least in the short term, better operating profit performance.

However, this does not guarantee the IPO outcome. A confidential submission is not a successful listing or a finalized valuation. The real test will begin after the prospectus is made public.

The public market will compare Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies on a single spreadsheet, examining revenue growth rates, profit margins, cash burn, compute expenditures, cloud partnership revenue shares, customer profiles, model capabilities, and commercialization paths.

Who goes public first and how the market reacts could influence the futures of both companies and potentially the next phase of the AI boom: either reinforcing market confidence in the transformative power of AI, or sounding a warning about overheating.

For investors, this competition is no longer just about "whose model is smarter." Now, it's also about who can turn the AI story into financial statements that the public market is willing to pay for.

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