Following Anthropic, OpenAI files confidentially for IPO

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, the company said Monday in a blog post. The filing comes a little more than a week after its main rival, Anthropic, also filed to go public , ramping up the race between the two AI firms.

OpenAI, which was last valued at $852 billion post-money , submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO. The company didn’t list the number of shares or set a price.

The filing is the latest signal that 2026 will be a blockbuster year for the public markets, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX also poised to make its debut at a $1.75 trillion valuation.

OpenAI is racing to IPO even as it recently missed its own targets for new users and revenue, per The Wall Street Journal . Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar reportedly expressed concern that OpenAI wouldn’t be able to support its massive spending on data centers. And the burn does appear to be massive.

In late March, OpenAI secured $122 billion in the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history — $3B of which came directly from retail investors via bank channels. But the firm is poised to spend the size of that round on computing power for AI research in 2028, and expects to burn $85 billion that year even after doubling sales from the year prior, per The Wall Street Journal. The company does not expect positive cash flow until 2030.

SpaceX’s AI spend , while not as large, provides another example of how the cost to train large language models can exceed the revenue companies bring in from those models.

Anthropic, on the other hand, has provided investors with a much rosier picture of its financials, saying that it is close to achieving its first quarterly profit. That said, with a recent $65 billion funding round and another $36 billion in chip-allocated debt potentially on its way, Anthropic’s burn rate isn’t exactly modest.

The confidential IPO filing allows OpenAI to start its preparation for a public offering without publicly disclosing detailed financial information or business risks, which is why the company hasn’t shared stock pricing or how much it hopes to raise yet. That said, the secondary markets provide a glimpse into what investors are willing to pay.

Anthropic recently surged to a $1 trillion valuation on Forge Global, a retail secondary market platform, surpassing OpenAI, which was recorded at around $880 billion in April.