OpenAI Submits an IPO Listing Application: “Three Major Super IPOs” Test the Resilience of the U.S. Stock Market

Author: Yang Chen, Long Yue, Wall Street Insights

OpenAI has secretly filed for an initial public offering (IPO), racing against Anthropic, as the AI giants' funding competition enters a new phase.

On Monday, local time, OpenAI announced it had secretly submitted an IPO application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This was just a week after Anthropic submitted a similar application, and SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, also launched its roadshow last week, planning to go public this week.

Three companies simultaneously rushing, with valuations all exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars. Bankers have clearly told OpenAI and Anthropic: whoever goes public first will be able to define this emerging industry first and prioritize locking in a large amount of AI-keen capital. OpenAI’s statement was cautious:

"We have not decided on a specific timeline, which may take some time, because some things might be easier to accomplish when we are a private company. However, this involves a series of complex trade-offs, and it also gives us the option to go public earlier if needed."**

According to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advance its IPO, with a potential market debut as early as this fall. The same sources also revealed that OpenAI plans to initiate a stock buyback several weeks before going public to provide liquidity for employees.

Three companies racing simultaneously, the largest IPO window in history opens

SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic—these three companies are lining up to go public within the same timeframe, each large enough to set records on their own.

SpaceX is the fastest, with its roadshow already launched last week, planning to complete the IPO this week, with an estimated valuation of about $1.8 trillion. This will be the largest IPO in history, and Elon Musk may become the first individual with assets exceeding one trillion dollars.

Anthropic announced last week that it had secretly filed for an IPO, with a recent private valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI’s $852 billion for the first time.

OpenAI is following up this week. If all three companies go public, their combined valuation will exceed $3.6 trillion, securing the top three spots for the largest IPO in history.

CNBC pointed out that all these companies are listed as “major competitors” in the AI field in SpaceX’s IPO documents.

OpenAI’s pressure: Burning money, competition, missing targets

For investors, OpenAI’s financial situation is the biggest unknown.

According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI recently missed some internal revenue targets and was overtaken by Anthropic in the enterprise customer market. Anthropic’s private valuation also surpassed OpenAI’s for the first time. OpenAI executives privately expressed concerns about Anthropic rushing to go public.

Burning money is also a core issue. OpenAI has completed Silicon Valley’s largest single financing round, raising $122 billion from investors including Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, with total funding exceeding $180 billion. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, based on disclosures to investors, OpenAI’s cash burn rate is expected to surpass that of any publicly listed company in history.

In February this year, OpenAI told investors it planned to invest about $600 billion in AI infrastructure by 2030.

OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar told media in an interview in April that for a company of OpenAI’s size, “looking, feeling, and acting like a public company is good management practice,” but she did not specify a timeline for going public at that time.

Can Altman’s “Third Stage” narrative persuade investors?

Before going public, OpenAI needs to clarify one key question for investors: where is this company’s money going, and when will it come back?

On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a blog, describing the company’s current positioning as the “Third Stage.” He wrote that the first stage was conducting general artificial intelligence research, the second stage was becoming a “product company” and learning how users utilize its tools.

Now we are entering the third stage, where the economy is being reshaped around AI. The core question is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and easy enough for everyone and every organization to benefit from.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is implementing internal focus and discipline. The company has shut down fringe projects like the short video app Sora, concentrating resources on enterprise business and coding assistant product Codex—directly competing with Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Altman wrote on X in April: “It feels like Codex is experiencing a ChatGPT moment.”

How long do investors have to wait after the secret application?

Filing an S-1 in secret is a common practice among U.S. tech companies preparing for an IPO. This process allows companies to communicate back and forth with regulators and revise the prospectus before disclosing financial information publicly.

For most investors, this means they cannot see OpenAI’s detailed financial data before the official IPO roadshow begins.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that OpenAI’s early investors include Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Microsoft, with more well-known institutional and corporate investors later joining. Once listed, these early investors will have a large exit window.

Anthropic and SpaceX are also in large-scale losses. The WSJ cited disclosures from Anthropic indicating that the company expects to achieve adjusted operating profit in the June quarter but may still incur losses for the full year (excluding stock-based incentives).

Regarding losses, supporters cite Amazon as a reference—this company experienced six consecutive years of losses after its founding, and for many years reinvested most profits into new businesses, ultimately becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world.