Analysis
The race between OpenAI and Anthropic to reach public markets first has increasingly become a test of profitability trajectory rather than scale or brand recognition. Both labs have filed confidentially with the SEC, and reported private-market valuations now put Anthropic, at roughly $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI's roughly $852 billion mark -- a genuine reversal given OpenAI's larger user base and longer fundraising history. OpenAI's own leadership reportedly expects Anthropic to list first, an unusually candid acknowledgment of where the two labs actually stand relative to public-market readiness.
SpaceX is the only genuinely comparable live data point either lab has to study, and its performance this week -- earnings on August 4, a major lockup unlock on August 6, trading roughly 20% below its $135 IPO price -- is the closest real-world rehearsal available for how public markets might absorb a similarly outsized AI-adjacent debut. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic operates a business as capital-intensive or as well understood by public investors as SpaceX's launch and satellite operations, but the scale of investor attention and the mechanics of insider lockups will likely rhyme.
The more consequential difference between the two labs isn't valuation, it's the story a prospectus would tell: OpenAI's projected cumulative losses run as high as $115 billion by 2029 under some estimates, while Anthropic has indicated it expects to reach its first operating profit relatively soon. A prospectus that surfaces that gap side by side would shift how public investors compare the two labs from capability and brand toward a much more traditional lens -- unit economics and path to profitability -- exactly the kind of scrutiny that mega-cap tech IPOs eventually face regardless of how dominant the underlying technology looks.
For growth investors and LPs with exposure to either lab through secondaries or adjacent funds, the sequencing decision matters enormously: whichever lab lists first sets the valuation benchmark the other gets measured against for years, and getting that timing wrong -- listing into a soft SpaceX-style unlock reaction, for instance -- could cost either company real value at pricing. What to watch: whether Anthropic actually holds its reported October target, and whether OpenAI's timing decision shifts visibly based on how SpaceX's stock, and eventually Anthropic's own debut, are received by public markets.
