Hey everyone, Hirokichi here.
One of the biggest stories in the AI world lately has to be the moves toward IPOs from Anthropic and OpenAI. Both companies have been driving the generative AI boom, so if either one actually goes public, it could have a huge impact on the stock market as a whole.
In this post, I want to walk through what we know so far about both companies’ IPO plans as of July 2026.
Table of Contents
- What Exactly Is an IPO?
- Anthropic Is Targeting a Nasdaq Listing in October
- OpenAI May Push Its IPO Back to 2027
- Why Are So Many AI Companies Rushing to Go Public?
- What Individual Investors Should Keep in Mind
What Exactly Is an IPO?
An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is when a previously private company lists its shares on a stock exchange, making them available for anyone to buy and sell. Going public lets a company raise large amounts of capital from the market, but it also comes with new responsibilities, like disclosing quarterly earnings.
Anthropic and OpenAI have mostly grown through massive funding rounds from venture capital firms and large corporations. But training AI models and building the data centers to run them costs an enormous amount of money. Going public is a way to raise even more capital, and from a much wider pool of investors — that’s the big picture behind both companies’ moves.
Anthropic Is Targeting a Nasdaq Listing in October
Anthropic reportedly submitted a confidential draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC (the Securities and Exchange Commission) on June 1, 2026. Filing an S-1 doesn’t mean the company is committed to going public — it just gives Anthropic the option to move forward once the SEC review is complete.
The filing came right after Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H funding round at a $965 billion valuation. That’s an enormous jump in valuation in under two years.
According to reports, Anthropic is targeting an October 2026 Nasdaq listing, with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley leading the offering, which is expected to raise more than $60 billion. That said, the company hasn’t set a share price, share count, or official listing date — whether and when the IPO actually happens will depend on market conditions going forward.
On the business side, Anthropic grew from $1 billion in annualized revenue at the end of 2024 to $30 billion by April 2026 — a 30-fold increase in just 16 months. The company now has more than 500 enterprise customers paying over $1 million a year, and 8 of the Fortune 10 are among its top customers, which says a lot about how deeply it has penetrated the enterprise AI market.
If it goes through, this would be the first IPO from a company built specifically around AI safety, and one of the largest public offerings in stock market history.
OpenAI May Push Its IPO Back to 2027
OpenAI has also filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC, reportedly on May 22, 2026, formally kicking off its path toward going public. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the deal, and OpenAI was initially said to be targeting a listing as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026.
Since then, though, the company has become more cautious. In late June 2026, Reuters reported that OpenAI is considering delaying its public debut to 2027. Part of the reasoning seems to be SpaceX’s stock sliding after its own record-breaking IPO, along with a broader slump in the tech stock market. Going public only to see the stock struggle right out of the gate isn’t an outcome anyone wants.
On the financial side, OpenAI says it’s generating $2 billion in revenue per month, growing about four times faster than Alphabet or Meta did at a comparable stage. Enterprise revenue now makes up more than 40% of the total, though it’s worth noting the company still isn’t profitable.
The expected listing window is somewhere between late 2026 and early 2027, at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Bank of America has also reportedly reversed its earlier caution, extending OpenAI a $520 million credit line — a sign that the banking sector’s attitude is shifting too.
Why Are So Many AI Companies Rushing to Go Public?
Watching all this unfold, I think it really comes down to one simple but massive reason: AI companies need an enormous amount of capital.
Training high-performance AI models requires huge numbers of GPUs (the specialized chips originally built for graphics, now essential for AI computation) and the massive data centers to run them, and those costs keep climbing every year. Venture capital alone can no longer keep up, so companies are turning to the stock market — a much bigger “wallet” — to fund their growth.
That said, 2026 has already shown that big IPOs don’t always go smoothly, as we saw with SpaceX’s stock dropping after its debut. How Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s IPOs actually play out — two of the biggest names in AI — will likely say a lot about the overall mood of the tech stock market going forward.
What Individual Investors Should Keep in Mind
To wrap up, here are three things I’d personally keep in mind.
(1) The listing date and share price are still undecided. Dates like “October” or “2027” that show up in the news are targets or speculation at this stage, not confirmed facts.
(2) A big valuation doesn’t automatically tell you whether the stock is cheap or expensive once it lists. Rather than getting swept up by headline numbers like $965 billion or $1 trillion, I think it’s worth waiting to see actual post-IPO performance and price action before making any decisions.
(3) Newly listed stocks tend to be volatile. As we saw with SpaceX, even massive, high-profile IPOs can see their stock price drop after listing. It’s worth gathering information and staying level-headed rather than jumping in just because something is getting a lot of buzz.
Let’s keep at it, slow and steady. See you next time!
* This article is for informational purposes only and does not recommend any specific investment. Please make investment decisions at your own responsibility.
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