Why Anthropic Is Racing to IPO While OpenAI Waits Until 2027
Two major AI companies are taking different paths to raise money. Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of large language models (LLMs), plans to sell shares to the public for the first time, possibly by mid-November. According to media reports on Wednesday, it could file the required paperwork as soon as Friday.
OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, had planned to go public in 2026. But it has decided to delay that plan and is now discussing another round of private funding instead. This is a major change for a company that had been moving quickly toward selling shares on the public stock market.
Here is why Anthropic still hopes to go public by the end of the year and why OpenAI has decided to wait.
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Anthropic has a chance to go public and its financial results are stronger than ever
Anthropic privately sent a draft of its S-1 registration form to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 1. Reports said the company planned to go public in October. But it waited so that potential investors could first see its financial results for the third quarter. It shared those results at an official investor meeting on Oct. 14.
Anthropic's revenue reached $16.8 billion in the third quarter (Q3), up from $11.5 billion in the second quarter (Q2) and $4.7 billion in the first quarter (Q1). The company said it had made a profit after certain costs were adjusted for the second quarter in a row. It also said it had more cash coming in from its business than going out after spending on investments. In Q3, Anthropic earned $1.70 in revenue for every $1 it spent on computing power. This suggests that its computing margin was above 40%.
The timing also works in Anthropic's favor. Space Exploration Technologies went public in June, so some time has passed for investors to build up interest in another major public stock offering. Since OpenAI has put off its own public offering for now, Anthropic stock could get most of the attention.
Why OpenAI is waiting
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke to Fortune in September and gave several reasons why the company would not go public in 2026. He said he believed that this "would be an ill-advised moment to go public" because more people are worried about the risks of developing AI. He also pointed to OpenAI's structure, which includes both nonprofit and for-profit parts. He explained that the company might make decisions that are not in its shareholders' financial interests. That could become harder to manage if the company were publicly traded.
These are reasonable reasons to wait. However, based on the financial figures each company has recently reported, OpenAI has not performed as well as Anthropic. The value placed on Anthropic in its latest funding rounds passed OpenAI's this year. Anthropic has also reported a profit after certain costs were adjusted, while OpenAI's operating loss grew to $12.3 billion in Q2.
Anthropic also reported more revenue than OpenAI in Q2: $11.6 billion compared with $6.7 billion. However, the figures may not be directly comparable. OpenAI reports net revenue, while Anthropic reportedly counts all contracts sold through cloud partners as revenue.
For now, OpenAI would rather raise money from private investors. It also wants to do this soon. According to Reuters, the company is seeking about $30 billion in a new funding round that would value it at $1.4 trillion, before Anthropic goes public. This has led some observers to wonder whether OpenAI wants to secure its next round of funding before Anthropic releases audited financial statements that investors can compare with OpenAI's results.
What to watch
The next major event will be the release of Anthropic's public S-1 filing, possibly this week. This document will let potential investors examine the company's audited financial results. So far, the market has seen only small pieces of information. The full balance sheet and financial statements will give a much clearer picture of Anthropic's business. The S-1 must be available to the public at least 15 days before Anthropic begins its investor roadshow, which is currently expected to start on Nov. 9. If the S-1 is not public by Oct. 25, the IPO could be delayed again.
OpenAI is still expected to go public in 2027, although Altman did not promise that it would happen in that year when asked. The timing may also depend on how Anthropic's IPO performs and how much interest investors have in AI stocks next year.