SAN FRANCISCO, May 29, 2026, 06:12 PDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Anthropic just pulled in a fresh $65 billion, a move that’s cranked up pressure on OpenAI as the ChatGPT developer gears up for a confidential U.S. IPO filing. The latest round pushed Anthropic’s valuation up to $965 billion, topping OpenAI’s previously reported $852 billion figure and drawing both AI heavyweights even closer to the public market spotlight.
Timing is crucial here, with investors bracing for an uncommon surge in blockbuster IPOs. According to Reuters this week, big U.S. mutual funds and passive index players are already socking away cash and eyeing which holdings to trim, all to clear space for newcomers like SpaceX and OpenAI. Goldman Sachs managing director John Flood said the market’s attention is “increasingly focused on the impact of potential large IPOs in the pipeline.” Reuters
Investors snapped up equity funds again in the week to May 27, pulling in a net $457.57 million after the previous week saw outflows, according to LSEG Lipper. AI-related stocks powered the turnaround. Technology funds alone attracted $4.98 billion, while MSCI’s world stock index hit a record high on Friday.
OpenAI is collaborating with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to get a draft IPO prospectus together, Reuters said on May 20, citing people with direct knowledge. The company is reportedly targeting a public listing as soon as September. Confidential filings allow companies to send draft paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission out of public view ahead of releasing the full prospectus.
According to the SEC, firms going through the nonpublic review are required to release their registration statements and any draft filings to the public no later than 15 days before a road show begins—or, if there’s no road show, at least 15 days ahead of the requested effective date. So far, OpenAI’s audited financials, details on risk factors, and specifics about capital-raising remain under wraps for investors.
OpenAI isn’t sharing a precise public schedule. In a statement quoted by Bloomberg and picked up by The Straits Times, the company said: “We regularly evaluate a range of strategic options. Our focus remains on execution.” The Straits Times
One hurdle got knocked out of the way after a U.S. jury sided against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI on May 18, saying he’d filed too late. Musk says he’s appealing. “Resolving that legal overhang removed a major obstacle to an IPO and likely gave OpenAI the confidence to accelerate its timeline,” IPOX Vice President Kat Liu told Reuters. Reuters
The competition isn’t just about lawsuits or balance sheets. Anthropic plans to use the fresh capital to boost its compute muscle—think chips, data centers, the backbone for its AI models—after reporting its annualized revenue measure topped $47 billion earlier this month. “Claude is increasingly indispensable to our growing global community of customers,” CFO Krishna Rao said. Anthropic
Anthropic is lining up roughly $36 billion in debt to fund infrastructure growth, Bloomberg News has reported, Reuters noted. The targeted financing is earmarked for snapping up Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs—AI-focused chips Anthropic plans to lease.
SpaceX fits right into the capital-market congestion. According to Reuters, funds are setting aside cash for both SpaceX and OpenAI, anticipating that new Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 rules will push some newly listed mega-caps into big indexes faster. That move could jack up liquidity, but it’s also likely to push index funds into dumping other large holdings to carve out space.
OpenAI has been working to widen its investor base before going public. In April, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC—per Reuters—that the company planned to set aside a portion of its IPO shares for individual investors, following what she described as “really strong demand” from retail participants during the most recent funding round. Friar also called it “good hygiene” for a company as large as OpenAI to “look and feel and act … like a public company.” Reuters
There’s always a chance the IPO window slams shut in a hurry. A confidential filing isn’t a sure ticket to a listing—final terms are still up for grabs if the market sours, if regulators want more detail, or if investors balk at the tab for chips, data centers, and cloud resources. Musk’s appeal is still hanging over the story on the reputational front, even with the verdict clearing the immediate legal hurdle.
Right now, it’s AI driving the action. “You’re getting these multiple confirmation points, and that’s just going to extend the rally for anything AI-related,” said Jason da Silva, director of global investment strategy at Arbuthnot Latham, after chipmakers led global stocks higher on Friday. The question for OpenAI: will that demand stick when private-market price tags face the reality check of the public markets? Reuters
