The previous coverage in this series focused on whether the pricing models of OpenAI and Anthropic could hold up once public investors started asking hard questions. Those questions are now formally queued. Both companies have filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC within days of each other, and the listing process is underway.
Anthropoc filed first. On June 1, the company submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC, days after closing a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion post-money valuation. That round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia. It also included $15 billion in previously committed investments from cloud providers, including $5 billion from Amazon. The filing puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI in the race to public markets, and it matters: the company that lists first shapes how investors think about the entire sector's value.
OpenAI filed its own confidential paperwork on May 22, working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. It is targeting a public debut as early as September 2026, at a valuation somewhere between $852 billion and $1 trillion. A California court had dismissed Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI the same week, removing one of the last significant legal risks before the listing.
The financial pictures are very different. Anthropic's run-rate revenue hit $47 billion in mid-May 2026, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, driven largely by enterprise customers and its coding tool, Claude Code. Over 1,000 customers now spend more than $1 million a year on Claude. The company is projecting its first profitable quarter for the three months ending June 30, with revenue of $10.9 billion and an operating profit of $559 million. That would make it the first frontier AI lab to post a quarterly operating profit.
But there is a catch. That projected profit rests on a discounted compute deal with SpaceX, where Anthropic is paying a reduced rate for server capacity specifically during the months it is claiming profitability. Once full rates kick in, the company has stated plainly that subsequent quarters may return to losses. The company's own longer-term projections also show it needs to sustain roughly $80 billion in cloud infrastructure costs through 2029 to hit its revenue targets. Profitability in one quarter is not the same as a sustainable margin structure.
OpenAI's position is harder to defend. The company spent roughly $22 billion in 2025 to generate $13.1 billion in revenue, a net loss of around $9 billion. Internal projections show a $14 billion operating loss in 2026. HSBC analysts estimate the company may need more than $207 billion in additional capital through 2030 just to cover its existing commitments. OpenAI's own CFO Sarah Friar reportedly preferred delaying the listing to 2027, citing concerns that the company's audit processes and financial controls are not yet ready for the disclosure standards public markets require.
The structural question that will shape both listings is the same one the previous coverage identified: can either company maintain pricing power as cheap alternatives from China and open-source providers continue to improve? That question does not go away because both companies have filed paperwork. It will be the central issue in every investor roadshow.
For businesses that currently use or are considering OpenAI or Anthropic products, the IPO filings change one practical thing. Both companies will soon need to demonstrate consistent, growing revenue to public shareholders. That creates pressure to push prices up or pull back on generous enterprise terms. Companies locked into multi-year contracts at current rates are in a reasonable position. Companies negotiating new agreements over the next twelve months may find the other side of the table less flexible than it was a year ago, when both companies were focused primarily on growth at any cost.