OpenAI IPO vs Anthropic

OpenAI has taken a key step toward a public listing by preparing a confidential draft S‑1, a move that accelerates a looming showdown among the largest AI model vendors as they approach public markets.

The confidential filing lets OpenAI work through SEC comments privately while keeping financial details sealed until a later, public registration stage, tightening timelines for competitors that are also readying IPOs or big private rounds.

Banking sources say OpenAI is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the confidential filing and is targeting a public debut later this year, signaling that the company wants to move from private valuations into the public benchmark race.

That signal immediately recasts Anthropic, Cohere and other frontier labs as live comparators for investors who will read S‑1s side by side and weigh which businesses have more sustainable economics.

Anthropic’s recent investor disclosures — reported in media coverage of ongoing funding talks — show a dramatic revenue surge and a projection of a first operating profit for the June quarter, figures that have turned it into a particularly sharp point of comparison.

Those internal projections also surfaced alongside a striking infrastructure commitment: papers tied to SpaceX’s own filing disclosed a multi‑year compute deal that would cost Anthropic roughly £930 million per month through May 2029, illustrating how much fixed capacity obligations can shape margins.

Industry analysts say the way public investors will judge these listings differs from private‑market thinking — emphasis will fall on revenue quality, the structure and duration of compute contracts, and the trajectory of margins under standard GAAP accounting.

That matters because many headline revenue figures in recent months have relied on non‑GAAP adjustments or time‑limited pricing and capacity deals, items that can bend headline profitability in the short run but mask recurring cost exposure.

OpenAI faces contrasting scrutiny: some reports say it missed internal growth targets and that finance executives are privately flagging the risk of funding large compute commitments if growth softens, a vulnerability investors will probe in S‑1 disclosures.

Anthropic’s case is similarly nuanced — fast revenue growth and a possible first profitable quarter give it a cleaner near‑term story, but its large compute contracts and the way it counts certain costs will be parsed closely once public filings standardize disclosures.

Beyond the headline numbers, prospective public investors will specifically watch how each lab recognizes revenue from enterprise contracts, counts stock‑based compensation, and treats model training costs as capex or operating expense — line items that materially change reported margins.

The practical result is a comparative investing landscape: once S‑1s and prospectuses are public, investors can benchmark GAAP net margins, recurring enterprise revenue, and long‑term compute commitments across providers, and then price risk and growth accordingly in the public markets.