Analysis
Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the SEC on June 1, 2026, roughly a week ahead of OpenAI's own confidential filing around May 22, according to CNBC and TechCrunch. Pulse has tracked Anthropic's and OpenAI's parallel paths toward Wall Street since both confidentially filed. Anthropic's most recent private round valued it at roughly $965 billion, pushing it past OpenAI's own $852 billion March mark, while OpenAI is reportedly targeting a debut above $1 trillion. Neither company has confirmed a public listing date, despite earlier reporting that pointed to a possible September 2026 window for OpenAI specifically.
The confidential-filing process lets both companies test investor appetite and work through SEC review privately before committing to a public timeline -- the same path Anthropic and dozens of other large private companies have used, but the stakes here are unusually high given the scale involved. A $1 trillion-plus OpenAI listing, or a near-$1 trillion Anthropic listing, would each individually dwarf SpaceX's record $75 billion IPO raise from June, the largest in history to date, even though SpaceX's overall valuation post-listing reached $1.77 trillion -- a reminder that raise size and total valuation are different numbers investors often conflate.
“Anthropic has offered no comparable public signal on timing.”
Why neither has set a date
Reporting has suggested OpenAI is now leaning toward a 2027 listing rather than 2026, citing financial and valuation concerns rather than any change in ambition -- a sign that even a company confident enough to target a trillion-dollar valuation is wary of a public market that could reprice AI-lab valuations downward before the roadshow even starts. Anthropic has offered no comparable public signal on timing. Both companies face structurally similar risk once they do file publicly: extreme compute spending, dependence on Nvidia and Microsoft/Google cloud capacity respectively, and revenue multiples that public investors will scrutinize far more skeptically than the private markets that have funded both labs to date.
