Two of the world's most valuable AI startups are heading for Wall Street in what is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched public-offering seasons in years. According to NBC News, Anthropic filed for an IPO before OpenAI, with OpenAI then quietly filing its own paperwork shortly after, per Memeburn — setting off what observers are calling an AI market race.
The backdrop is SpaceX's blockbuster debut. The Motley Fool reported that SpaceX's mega-IPO soared on June 12, jolting tech stocks at midday and sparking fresh excitement about large private companies finally unlocking access for public investors. TechCrunch noted that startups more broadly are now trying to "ride that SpaceX IPO wave."
Not everyone is bullish on the timing, however. Both MSN and Seeking Alpha reported that prediction-market odds of Anthropic and OpenAI actually going public dipped in the wake of SpaceX's listing — a sign that SpaceX's success may have raised the bar rather than lowered it. The Economist posed the pointed question of whether the stock market can realistically absorb SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI at the valuations being floated.
According to Bloomberg, the wave of mega-listings from these companies is poised to end what it calls Wall Street's "era of stock scarcity" — a long stretch in which elite private companies stayed private, keeping their gains out of reach for ordinary investors.
Meanwhile, Fortune reported that both OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have been walking back earlier warnings about AI-driven job losses as they court public-market investors — a rhetorical shift that critics say reflects IPO-season incentives.
If these trillion-dollar companies successfully go public, it would be the largest infusion of AI equity into retail portfolios in history — fundamentally changing who owns a stake in the AI boom.