IPO to Beat OpenAI by a Step, Anthropic Aims to Seize AI 'Pricing Power'

Original Author: Long Yue, Wall Street News

Anthropic has taken the first step, pushing its competition with OpenAI - spanning models, revenue, and valuation - into the realm of public market pricing.

Anthropic announced on Monday that it has confidentially submitted an IPO application in the US, beating its rival OpenAI to the listing process. In a statement, Anthropic said the filing gives it "the right to go public once the SEC completes its review," emphasizing that "the proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."

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

This has suddenly made the IPO race among AI model companies more tangible. Previously, the market was more focused on whose model is stronger and who has more users. Now, the question becomes: who will first face public market scrutiny, and who will first establish a valuation benchmark for "frontier AI companies"?

This filing will test whether investor enthusiasm for AI can withstand the scrutiny of the public market and will also determine which company creates the valuation template for the high-growth AI industry.

OpenAI has not yet followed suit with its own filing. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that he is "not focused on the timing of a potential IPO" and that the company "will go public when the time is right."

However, this wasn't the market's expectation. In prediction markets, most participants previously anticipated that OpenAI would file for an IPO before Anthropic.

IPO Window is Open, But Capital is Not Unlimited

Anthropic's rush to market reflects a very real market window.

According to Dealogic data, the IPO market has regained momentum in recent weeks. Global IPO proceeds reached $87.5 billion as of May 26, the highest level for the same period since 2021.

Currently, the IPO window has clearly opened. AI chip company Cerebras surged 68% on its first trading day last month. According to FactSet data, among companies that went public in the last five years with valuations exceeding $10 billion, only digital design platform Figma, which rose 250% on its debut last year, had a higher first-day gain.

However, an open window does not mean unlimited capital.

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

Kat Liu, Vice President at IPO research firm IPOX, told Reuters: "By filing shortly after SpaceX, Anthropic can take advantage of the still-favorable window and leverage strong investor interest in AI and growth stocks."

She added: "Compared to SpaceX, Anthropic's valuation demands don't seem as aggressive when viewed in isolation."

Patrick Healy, founder of Issuer Network, stated: "There's only so much oxygen in the room." He added: "SpaceX will consume a massive amount of capital, and the second player to come to market will be in a better position than the third."

Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, commented: "The combined capital needs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic will be very substantial and are likely to disrupt the capital markets. So going public earlier would be a significant advantage."

Filing First Means Grabbing the Narrative, But Also Assuming Risk

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

But going public first also has its costs: first to disclose finances, first to face scrutiny from institutional investors, and first to reveal the true cost structure of an AI company.

Harrison Rolfes, Senior Analyst at PitchBook, noted: "The conventional reading is that Anthropic has gained a narrative advantage by filing first."

However, he offered another perspective: "An unorthodox reading is that OpenAI actually got the better outcome: Anthropic volunteered to bear all the disclosure risks first, allowing OpenAI to observe how institutional investors react to audited financial data of a frontier AI company for free, before deciding on its own pricing."

This comment highlights the key challenge of an AI company's IPO. The public market doesn't just look at the "AI story"; it also scrutinizes revenue quality, computing costs, cloud service revenue sharing, cash burn, customer structure, and profit margins.

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

But being first doesn't guarantee a profit.

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

The report also mentioned that Facebook's stock price dropped by more than half within three months of its 2012 IPO, as the market worried about its ability to adapt to the mobile advertising transition. Facebook later proved its business model, but other companies that had planned to go public, including Twitter, ultimately had to wait.

This means that by being the first mover, Anthropic could either secure the pricing power for AI IPOs or become the first major model company to have its "books dissected" by the public market.

Why Anthropic: Revenue, Valuation, and Profit Narrative Are All Changing

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

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

This shift has been rapid. The report noted 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 approximately five-fold; during the same period, OpenAI's revenue grew by 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 for AI coding and other white-collar work scenarios to enterprises.

For the public market, both types of revenue will be compared. Subscription revenue hinges on user scale and retention, while enterprise API revenue depends on customer 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, with a post-money valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI. OpenAI's latest valuation in March this year was $852 billion.

Anthropic's valuation has also risen rapidly. In February, Anthropic's valuation was $380 billion when it raised $30 billion. By late May, the valuation had more than doubled. The latest round of investors includes 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 could change traditional business models and accelerate industry disruption.

Regarding profitability, the gap is attracting 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, on the other hand, remains in a state of heavy losses. The report states that OpenAI's first-quarter operating loss margin was as high as 122%, even after excluding major items like equity incentives. According to the report's calculations, OpenAI's quarterly operating loss was at least $7 billion.

Cost pressure mainly stems from computing power.

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

Anthropic is not without cost pressures. Anthropic also needs to share revenue with its cloud partners. Its revenue accounting includes all amounts sold through other cloud service providers, a portion of which ultimately flows back to those partners.

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

This is another area the public market will probe: how fast is revenue growing? Is computing cost rising faster or slower? How much of the total revenue ultimately goes to partners? Are enterprise customers truly loyal, or are they being driven by short-term AI enthusiasm?

This IPO Race Will Ultimately Become a Stress Test for the Public Market

From a timeline perspective, Anthropic has already taken a step forward.

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.

But this does not mean the IPO outcome is certain. A confidential filing is not a successful listing, nor is it a finalized valuation. The real test will begin after the prospectus becomes public.

The public market will compare Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies on a single spreadsheet: revenue growth rate, profit margin, cash burn, computing expenditure, cloud partnership revenue sharing, customer structure, model capability, and commercialization path.

Who goes public first and how the market reacts could influence the future of both companies and potentially the next phase of the AI boom: either reinforcing market confidence in the transformative power of AI or issuing a warning about AI 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 a financial statement that the public market is willing to buy.

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