The most famous name in AI just started its march to Wall Street, but the numbers under the hood tell a messier story than the headline.
OpenAI has confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the SEC for an initial public offering, the company confirmed Monday in a blog post. The move lands just over a week after rival Anthropic filed too, turning the AI arms race into an IPO race. OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion post-money.
Picture two heavyweight labs, each worth roughly the GDP of a mid-sized country, sprinting toward the same finish line at the same time, both knowing the capital pool they are racing for is starting to shrink. That is the scene right now. And the one with the bigger brand name is, by its own filings, the one bleeding more cash.
What Happened
OpenAI submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO. It did not list the number of shares or set a price, which is exactly what the confidential route allows: prep the offering without showing the world its detailed financials or risk factors yet.
The timing is the story. The filing comes a little more than a week after Anthropic also filed to go public. Add Elon Musk’s SpaceX, poised to debut at a $1.75 trillion valuation, and 2026 is shaping up to be a blockbuster year for public markets.
The Backstory
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab and blew the doors off the AI world when it released ChatGPT in 2022. It is the consumer-facing giant of the bunch, with around 900 million weekly active users.
But scale and cash flow are not the same thing. In late March, OpenAI closed a $122 billion round, the largest in Silicon Valley history, including $3 billion straight from retail investors via bank channels. Impressive. The catch: per The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI plans to spend roughly the size of that entire round on computing power in 2028 alone, expects to burn $85 billion that year even after doubling sales, and does not expect positive cash flow until 2030. CFO Sarah Friar reportedly voiced concern about whether the company can support its data center spending. OpenAI also recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue.
The Plan
Go public, but quietly first. The confidential filing buys OpenAI time to shape its story before opening the books. Meanwhile, the secondary markets are doing the pricing in the open.
Here is where it gets interesting. Anthropic recently surged to a $1 trillion valuation on Forge Global, a retail secondary platform, surpassing OpenAI, which sat around $880 billion in April. David Shapiro of OpenVC, who runs the NYSE OpenVC 500 Index, said Anthropic has appreciated 123% year-to-date versus OpenAI’s 11.3%. Anthropic is also telling investors a rosier financial story, claiming it is close to its first quarterly profit, though with a fresh $65 billion round and a potential $36 billion in chip-allocated debt, its burn is hardly modest either.
| Metric (per source) | OpenAI | Anthropic |
|---|---|---|
| Last private valuation | $852B post-money | Near $1T |
| Secondary-market read | ~$880B (April) | $1T (Forge Global) |
| YTD appreciation | 11.3% | 123% |
| Profitability signal | No positive cash flow until 2030 | Nears first quarterly profit |
Shapiro’s read on OpenAI was not bearish, though. He noted its stock saw a slight pop in recent days, suggesting investors may be pricing both firms as the “dual winners” of the LLM race.
The Business Model Angle
This is a classic land-grab race, and the asset being grabbed is not customers. It is capital. Experts told the WSJ that whoever debuts first will likely nab more of what is becoming increasingly scarce funding for AI, much of which is already earmarked for SpaceX, expected to IPO first among the three.
The strategic lesson for founders: in a capital-intensive category, sequencing beats perfection. Anthropic filing first does more than grab attention. Its disclosures set a valuation comp that constrains how OpenAI can price its own offering later, especially with a recent PitchBook report calling OpenAI overvalued relative to fundamentals. The first mover doesn’t just get the money. It writes the pricing rules everyone after it has to live with. If you are raising into a crowded, thirsty market, the order of operations is itself a competitive weapon. OpenAI’s own arc from research lab to commercial platform, which we break down in our OpenAI business model analysis, is a long study in monetizing momentum, but momentum and margins are different animals.
The Risk
The brand is huge. The losses are huger. Burning $85 billion in a single year and waiting until 2030 for positive cash flow is the kind of math that works beautifully in a bull market and terrifyingly in a downturn. If AI returns disappoint or capital tightens faster than expected, OpenAI is the company with the most consumer reach and one of the steepest cash-burn curves. Going public also means opening those books, and a confidential filing only delays that reckoning, it doesn’t cancel it. The “dual winners” thesis is comforting right up until investors decide a market this expensive can only support one.
Quick Questions
u003cstrongu003eDid OpenAI actually set an IPO price?u003c/strongu003e
No. It filed a confidential draft with the SEC and did not disclose share count or pricing. That’s the whole point of going the confidential route.
u003cstrongu003eWhy does Anthropic filing first matter for OpenAI?u003c/strongu003e
Whoever debuts first likely captures more scarce AI capital, and Anthropic’s disclosures set a valuation benchmark that limits how OpenAI can price its own offering.
u003cstrongu003eIs OpenAI losing money?u003c/strongu003e
By its own projections reported by the WSJ, yes, heavily. It expects to burn $85 billion in 2028 and doesn’t forecast positive cash flow until 2030.
u003cstrongu003eWho’s winning on valuation right now?u003c/strongu003e
On secondary markets, Anthropic recently hit $1 trillion and is up 123% year-to-date, versus OpenAI’s 11.3%, though OpenAI’s secondary stock saw a recent pop too.
The Bottom Line
OpenAI has the bigger brand and the bigger burn. The race to the public markets is really a race for scarce capital, and the company that files first gets to set the terms. For founders, the takeaway is that timing and sequencing can matter as much as the product itself, especially when you’re asking the market to fund years of losses before the first dollar of free cash flow.
