Anthropic filed confidential IPO papers with the SEC on June 1, 20261. Its valuation had reached $965 billion the month before. OpenAI followed a week later, confirming on June 8 that it had filed too29. Two labs that spent years naming each other as the main threat reached the public markets days apart. Timing that tight says one thing. Both read the same window, and judged it open.
Anthropic and OpenAI filed for IPOs a week apart, on June 1 and June 8, 2026
Listings, filings, rounds and restructuring steps the piece tracks, September 2024 to August 2026, by date
Each pin is one event on a rail spaced by real time: the two magenta pins are the Anthropic and OpenAI filings, and the gray pins are the other listings, rounds and steps around them.
Sources: Wikipedia [1]; Wikipedia [2]; Wikipedia [3]; Wikipedia [4]; Wikipedia [5]; Wikipedia [6]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Sept. 2024 | Cerebras files S-1. Cerebras files for a Nasdaq listing; An S-1 under the ticker CBRS |
| March 2025 | CoreWeave debut ~$27B. CoreWeave debuts at roughly $27 billion; March 28, 2025, after cutting its raise under investor pressure |
| Sept. 2025 | Klarna lists at $40. Klarna lists on the NYSE at $40 a share; Sept. 10, 2025, after a pause in April |
| Oct. 2025 | Cerebras pulls its IPO. Cerebras pulls its IPO papers; A month after raising $1.1 billion at an $8.1 billion valuation |
| Oct. 2025 | OpenAI becomes a PBC. OpenAI becomes a public benefit corporation; Oct. 28, 2025, once the California and Delaware attorneys general signed off |
| June 1, 2026 | Anthropic files. Anthropic files confidentially with the SEC; Valued at $965 billion the month before |
| June 8, 2026 | OpenAI files. OpenAI confirms its own filing; A week after Anthropic |
| Aug. 2026 | Databricks raises $5B. Databricks closes a $5 billion round; At a $190 billion valuation, chosen over a listing |
A Week Apart, Independently
Signals came earlier. The New York Times had reported Anthropic was pursuing an IPO with a target debut in the fall of 2026, well ahead of the confidential filing1. Dario Amodei built toward that date with roughly the team the lab started with. He runs it as chief executive, Daniela Amodei as president, Mike Krieger as chief product officer, Jared Kaplan as chief science officer. Research and product outweigh the finance and legal hires a listing usually brings.
OpenAI's preparation showed more. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar joined after running Nextdoor as chief executive and serving as Block's CFO2. She now manages the exact transition her résumé was built for. Altman told staff he expected an IPO "within the next year," per Wikipedia's account of internal messages, and flagged a variable that cuts against speed. Progress toward recursive self-improvement, he suggested, could make waiting the better move. Read that reasoning again. A chief executive timed an IPO to his own product's rate of improvement, ahead of market conditions.
The Restructuring That Made an IPO Possible
OpenAI's filing came eight months after a corporate change. The company proposed moving from a capped-profit structure to a Delaware public benefit corporation in December 20242. It finished on Oct. 28, 2025, once the California and Delaware attorneys general signed off8. Ownership split three ways. The OpenAI Foundation kept 26%, Microsoft held 27%, and staff and other investors split the rest.
Friar's skill alone would have left that problem in place. A capped-profit entity under a nonprofit board carries friction a public benefit corporation removes. It gives OpenAI a plain cap table investors can read. Anthropic skipped the question, having set up as a public benefit corporation at its 2021 founding1. That explains why its path produced so little structural news. Both firms still needed bankers fluent in numbers this size, underwriters willing to price a first-of-its-kind deal, and auditors able to read compute contracts worth hundreds of billions.
CoreWeave's Precedent and Klarna's Warning
Public markets already ruled once on AI infrastructure. CoreWeave debuted March 28, 2025 at roughly $27 billion, after cutting its raise under investor pressure3. Its contract backlog hit $104 billion by the third quarter of 2026. That gives OpenAI and Anthropic a good comparison. A company priced low at listing can still grow fast once public, which rewards the buyers who took the low price.
Klarna points the other way. The fintech completed its IPO on Sept. 10, 2025, listing on the New York Stock Exchange under KLAR at $40 a share6. Its process started quietly in 2024, filed publicly in March 2025, paused in April amid tariff-driven swings, and restarted later that year. Klarna's private value had peaked at $46 billion in a June 2021 round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. Eighteen months of stop and start brought it back at a far smaller price. A window can close between the filing and the debut.
The Holdouts
Cerebras shows how completely it can close. The chip designer filed an S-1 for a Nasdaq listing under CBRS in September 20244. That October, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States opened a review of an investment from G4212. A national-security review can stall any timeline. Chief executive Andrew Feldman said in May 2025 that he hoped to go public within the year. Instead Cerebras raised $1.1 billion that September at an $8.1 billion valuation, then pulled its IPO papers in October. Feldman says the firm still means to list, and a January 2026 deal with OpenAI worth more than $10 billion came framed as groundwork for one. Review cost Cerebras its window, rather than investor appetite. That difference matters. Private money stayed open the whole time, as the $8.1 billion round shows, while the public route stayed shut on grounds OpenAI and Anthropic currently avoid.
Databricks chose to stay private and raise instead. The data and AI platform closed a $5 billion round in August 2026 led by Coatue Management, with Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price and Sixth Street Growth alongside5. It priced at $190 billion against a $7 billion revenue run rate. Chief executive Ali Ghodsi described how little effort the raise took. "We wanted to raise $1 billion, but then The Information printed this article saying that Databricks is doing a big fundraise."7
Anthropic's $965 billion valuation is five times the $190 billion Databricks drew by staying private
Valuation at the capital event the piece names for each company, billions of dollars
Each bar is one company's valuation, dated in its label: the magenta bar is Anthropic the month before it filed, and the gray bars are the prices three other AI firms drew.
Sources: Wikipedia [1]; Wikipedia [3]; Wikipedia [4]; Wikipedia [5]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic, May 2026 | $965B | The month before its confidential IPO filing |
| Databricks round, Aug. 2026 | $190B | A $5 billion round against a $7 billion revenue run rate |
| CoreWeave debut, March 2025 | $27B | Roughly $27 billion, after it cut its raise |
| Cerebras round, Sept. 2025 | $8.1B | A month before it pulled its IPO papers |
Demand did the rest. "Just from this select group of investors that we looked at, there was $15 billion of interest."7 Ghodsi runs a firm with public-company revenue and zero earnings calls to answer for. OpenAI and Anthropic gave that up the day their filings became public.
Whether the Market Has Room
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives watched Anthropic file a week ahead of OpenAI and weighed in two days later. Ives told the Associated Press the move marked a major step for Anthropic to get ahead of OpenAI and "an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years, with these three major conglomerates set to go public later this year"10. Three names entered that one sentence, and Ives treated OpenAI and Anthropic as the first of three listings in a market with room for more than a pair.
Patrick Corrigan reached a different number. A Notre Dame law professor who studies IPOs, Corrigan set the OpenAI-Anthropic sequence beside the dot-com era, when fast listings produced both winners and companies that failed within a few years. "The question here is whether the price investors are going to end up paying is going to match up to the substance and fundamentals of what AI is really going to do in the real economy and as a business," Corrigan told the Associated Press in June 202611. Ives counted names. Corrigan counted dollars, and the price each company sets at its debut settles which count mattered.
By the numbers
- June 1, 2026 marked Anthropic's confidential IPO filing with the SEC1.
- Anthropic's valuation stood at $965 billion in May 2026, the month before that filing1.
- June 8 brought OpenAI's confirmation that it had filed for a public listing too2.
- Microsoft holds 27% of OpenAI's new structure, beside the OpenAI Foundation's 26%2.
- CoreWeave's contract backlog reached $104 billion by the third quarter of 20263.
- Databricks reached a $190 billion valuation in August 2026, having picked a round over a listing5.
- Fifteen billion dollars of investor interest chased a Databricks round first sized at $1 billion7.
- Cerebras carried an $8.1 billion valuation in September 2025, one month before pulling its registration4.
What to watch
Both debut timelines test one thing first. Do June's filings become a 2026 listing, or slip into 2027 under the timing pressure that stretched Klarna's process across eighteen months6? Year-end tallies from Renaissance Capital and Dealogic will show whether the two arrive into a willing market or a crowded one. Cerebras deserves particular attention4. A fresh CFIUS resolution or a renewed S-1 would show whether Feldman's stated intent survives a second attempt, or whether the company follows Databricks into permanent private financing5.
Sources
- Wikipedia contributors, "Anthropic," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic
- Wikipedia contributors, "OpenAI," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
- Wikipedia contributors, "CoreWeave," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreWeave
- Wikipedia contributors, "Cerebras," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebras
- Wikipedia contributors, "Databricks," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Databricks
- Wikipedia contributors, "Klarna," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klarna
- TechCrunch, "Databricks wanted to raise $1B, investors wanted $15B. It settled on $5B at a $190B valuation.," TechCrunch, Aug. 13, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/databricks-wanted-to-raise-1b-investors-wanted-15b-it-settled-on-5b-at-a-190b-valuation/
- Reuters, "OpenAI restructures into public-benefit firm, Microsoft takes 27% stake," Reuters (via Al Jazeera), Oct. 28, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/10/28/openai-restructures-into-public-benefit-firm-microsoft-takes-27-stake
- Steve Kopack, "OpenAI files for IPO as AI investment race intensifies," NBC News, June 8, 2026, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/openai-chatgpt-files-ipo-rcna349101
- Matt O'Brien, The Associated Press, "Top analyst sees 'opening of the floodgates for the IPO market' after Anthropic's filing as dotcom bubble comparisons fly," Fortune, June 2, 2026, https://fortune.com/2026/06/02/anthropic-ipo-openai-valuation-ai-bubble/
- Matt O'Brien, The Associated Press, "Top analyst sees 'opening of the floodgates for the IPO market' after Anthropic's filing as dotcom bubble comparisons fly," Fortune, June 2, 2026, https://fortune.com/2026/06/02/anthropic-ipo-openai-valuation-ai-bubble/
- Echo Wang, Max A. Cherney and Krystal Hu, "Exclusive-Cerebras likely to postpone IPO due to CFIUS review delay on G42 deal, sources say," Reuters (via The Print), Oct. 9, 2024, https://theprint.in/tech/exclusive-cerebras-likely-to-postpone-ipo-due-to-cfius-review-delay-on-g42-deal-sources-say/2303470/