OpenAI vs Anthropic IPO Race: Who Rings the Bell First at Nearly $1 Trillion?

OpenAI filed its confidential S-1 on May 22 and Anthropic followed on June 1, 2026. With combined valuations approaching $2 trillion, this is the biggest AI IPO wave in history. Here is everything you need to know — including what it means for crypto markets.

 

 

The summer of 2026 is shaping up to be the most consequential season for technology capital markets in a generation. SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, pricing its shares at $135 each on the Nasdaq, raising approximately $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. On its first day of trading, the stock briefly surged to $225.64, pushing its market cap above $2.2 trillion — topping Amazon — before pulling back.

 

That historic debut lit the fuse for two equally seismic events: OpenAI's confidential S-1 filing on May 22, targeting a September 2026 listing above $1 trillion, and Anthropic's formal confidential submission on June 1, carrying a $965 billion post-money valuation from its $65 billion Series H round just days prior.

 

Together, these three listings represent the densest concentration of high-value private technology entering public markets in a single calendar year. For investors across both traditional and crypto markets, the implications are significant. MEXC, one of the world's leading crypto exchanges, has observed measurable cross-market sentiment shifts tied to each major AI event — and the IPO wave is only beginning.

 

 

OpenAI filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on May 22, 2026, targeting a September 2026 listing at a valuation above $1 trillion, with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan leading the offering.

 

Anthropic formally submitted its confidential draft S-1 on June 1, 2026, following a $65 billion Series H round that set its post-money valuation at $965 billion, with an October 2026 Nasdaq listing target.

 

SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history on June 12, 2026, raising $75 billion at $1.77 trillion and briefly exceeding a $2.2 trillion market cap on its first day of trading.

 

Anthropic grew annualized revenue from approximately $1 billion at end-2024 to $30 billion by April 2026 — a 30x increase in 16 months — but has not yet reached profitability.

 

OpenAI generates roughly $2 billion in monthly revenue but loses approximately $1.22 for every dollar earned, burning an estimated $14 billion per year.

 

 

To understand what OpenAI and Anthropic are walking into, the SpaceX debut is the essential reference point.

 

According to CNBC's live coverage of the SpaceX Nasdaq debut, the company listed under the ticker SPCX on June 12, 2026, with Class A share volume exceeding 207 million shares and dollar volume surpassing $33 billion — more than QQQ and SPY combined on the same day. Its session high of $168.75 represented a 25% gain over the IPO price within hours of the open.

 

What SpaceX proved to Wall Street is consequential: even a company posting a GAAP net loss of nearly $5 billion in 2025 can command a trillion-dollar-plus valuation if its revenue growth trajectory is large enough and its market positioning is credible. As SmartAsset's SpaceX IPO analysis notes, the stock peaked at $225.64 intraday on June 16 before pulling back, and as of June 22 traded near $165 — still roughly 22% above its IPO price.

 

For OpenAI and Anthropic, the playbook is now written. The question is whether public market investors will apply the same generosity to pure-AI software companies with no hardware moat.

 

 

OpenAI submitted its confidential S-1 to the SEC on May 22, 2026. The timing was deliberate. As reporting from Indmoney confirms, the filing came just two days after a California jury dismissed Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI on statute-of-limitations grounds — clearing the single biggest legal overhang on the company's path to public markets.

 

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan are co-leading the deal. CEO Sam Altman is targeting a listing as early as September 2026, though SmartAsset's OpenAI IPO coverage notes that CFO Sarah Friar has internally expressed concerns that additional time may be needed to complete the operational and compliance work required for a public offering.

 

The financial picture is striking in both directions. OpenAI now generates approximately $2 billion per month in revenue, with enterprise clients accounting for more than 40% of that figure, growing at roughly four times the pace that Alphabet and Meta achieved at comparable revenue stages. The company has completed its structural conversion from a nonprofit parent to OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation, removing the last major governance barrier to listing.

 

Yet profitability remains distant. The company loses approximately $1.22 for every dollar it earns, and annual compute spend is running at approximately $14 billion. At a $1 trillion valuation target, investors would be paying 34 to 40 times revenue for a company with no clear near-term path to positive GAAP earnings. The bet is on AI dominance — not current income.

 

 

While OpenAI's filing was widely anticipated, Anthropic moved faster on the disclosure front. TechCrunch confirmed that on June 1, 2026, the company published a blog post formally acknowledging its confidential S-1 submission — the kind of official Rule 135 notice that distinguishes it from a mere media report.

 

The backdrop was Anthropic's Series H round, which closed just days earlier at $65 billion in new funding, pushing its post-money valuation to $965 billion. Amazon and Alphabet are its two largest strategic backers, with Amazon alone having committed more than $8 billion in total.

 

The revenue trajectory Anthropic has displayed is, by any historical measure, extraordinary. According to BitMEX's Anthropic IPO guide, the company grew annualized revenue from roughly $1 billion at end-2024 to $30 billion by April 2026 — a 30-fold increase in 16 months, sustaining 10x annual compound growth for three consecutive years. Claude Code alone has reached $2.5 billion in annualized run-rate revenue. More than 500 enterprise customers carry annual contract values exceeding $1 million, and 8 of the Fortune 10 are active clients.

 

Gross margins currently sit at approximately 40%, with a stated target of 77% by 2028, the year the company also targets GAAP profitability. Until then, heavy compute investment — approximately $19 billion budgeted for 2026 — will keep losses elevated. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley are the co-lead underwriters, with an October 2026 Nasdaq listing as the target.

 

Anthropic's most distinctive positioning is its "AI safety" founding narrative. It will be the first company to go public as a dedicated AI safety lab. In a 2026 regulatory environment where AI governance is a growing legislative priority across the US, EU, and major Asian markets, this framing carries strategic value that no financial model can fully capture.

 

 

OpenAI and Anthropic are superficially similar — both build frontier large language models, both are headquartered in San Francisco, and both are targeting valuations close to $1 trillion. But their business architectures diverge meaningfully.

 

OpenAI operates primarily as a scaled consumer and developer platform. ChatGPT's consumer user base runs into the hundreds of millions, and its API ecosystem underpins a significant proportion of the global AI application layer. This creates massive revenue breadth but also higher operational complexity, greater regulatory surface area, and a dependency on continued consumer engagement.

 

Anthropic is more tightly focused on enterprise B2B deployment. Claude's adoption in healthcare, legal, financial services, and government — sectors with stringent compliance requirements — reflects a deliberate positioning away from consumer virality and toward institutional trust. This comes at the cost of slower early growth, but with the benefit of higher contract stickiness and reduced regulatory exposure.

 

For traders and investors on MEXC, both narratives will likely drive distinct waves of AI-related crypto asset activity. When OpenAI's public S-1 lands, expect a spike in attention toward AI agent and AI infrastructure tokens. When Anthropic's October listing approaches, the AI safety and enterprise AI narrative will likely dominate.

 

 

The relationship between the AI IPO cycle and crypto markets is real, though often misread.

 

The most direct mechanism is liquidity competition. SpaceX's first-day dollar volume alone exceeded $33 billion. When OpenAI and Anthropic follow, institutional capital allocation decisions will necessarily involve trade-offs with other risk assets, including cryptocurrency. Short-term, this creates headwinds for crypto market inflows during peak IPO windows.

 

The sentiment linkage runs in the opposite direction over the medium term. Each AI milestone — a major funding round, a product launch, an IPO filing — historically correlates with increased retail and institutional interest in AI-themed crypto assets. The AI IPO wave, if it proceeds successfully, will embed AI as a permanent fixture of the mainstream investment conversation. Tokens tied to decentralized AI infrastructure, AI agent protocols, and on-chain compute marketplaces stand to benefit from the elevated attention.

 

There is also a valuation signaling effect. Anthropic's $965 billion valuation against a revenue multiple of approximately 32x sets a market reference point for AI company pricing. This benchmark will ripple through how markets value analogous crypto-native AI projects.

 

MEXC currently offers the widest selection of AI-related crypto trading pairs in the industry, with 0% Maker fees on spot trading and 100% proof-of-reserves verification. For investors looking to position around the AI IPO wave, the platform provides both the breadth and the cost structure to execute efficiently.

 

 

 

The MEXC Crypto Pulse research team has closely tracked the convergence of AI capital markets and crypto since the first major AI funding rounds of 2023. Here is our current assessment of the 2026 AI IPO cycle:

 

First: SpaceX's success is a benchmark, not a guarantee for what follows. SpaceX's sustained post-IPO premium rests on Starlink's $11.4 billion in real 2025 revenue and a path to expanding profitability. OpenAI and Anthropic lack that kind of near-term earnings anchor. In a rate environment where the 10-year Treasury still carries meaningful yield, public market investors will demand more than a growth story — they will demand visibility on when losses stop. Neither company has provided that visibility with precision.

 

Second: Anthropic's timing strategy is astute. By filing just three weeks after SpaceX's blockbuster debut, Anthropic captured peak AI market enthusiasm while establishing the "first pure AI safety IPO" narrative before OpenAI could. If Anthropic's public S-1 — expected around August 2026 — shows a quarter approaching breakeven, the October listing window could attract institutional demand that rivals SpaceX's.

 

Third: OpenAI's September timeline carries meaningful execution risk. SEC review of confidential filings typically takes 60 to 90 days with multiple comment rounds. The public S-1 must be released at least 15 days before the roadshow begins. That mathematics makes a September listing ambitious. Internal concerns from CFO Sarah Friar about compliance readiness suggest the September target functions more as a negotiating anchor than a firm commitment.

 

Fourth: For crypto market participants, two specific dates are worth tracking. The first is Anthropic's public S-1 release, likely in August 2026, which will be the most information-dense AI valuation event in years. The second is the OpenAI roadshow window, during which any disclosed financial metrics will establish new market benchmarks. Both events historically correlate with elevated volatility in AI-related crypto assets — creating potential trading opportunities for investors positioned in advance.

 

 

 

OpenAI is targeting September 2026; Anthropic is targeting October 2026. Both have submitted confidential S-1 filings but have not set a share price, share count, or confirmed exchange. The final timing will depend on SEC review progress and market conditions at the time each company decides to proceed.

 

 

Retail investors cannot access shares during the confidential filing period. Once each company releases its public S-1 and completes its roadshow, shares will be available through standard brokerage accounts at the IPO price if allocated, or on the open market from the first day of trading.

 

 

Anthropic's valuation reflects its 30x revenue growth over 16 months, its dominant position in enterprise AI adoption among Fortune 10 companies, and the strategic premium placed on its AI safety positioning. Investors are pricing in a future where Anthropic captures a large share of enterprise AI spending, which is expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually by 2030.

 

 

OpenAI is a dual-track platform serving both consumers (ChatGPT) and developers (API), with revenue breadth and massive user scale. Anthropic is primarily enterprise-focused, prioritizing B2B contracts in regulated industries where compliance and reliability matter more than consumer virality. OpenAI has higher absolute revenue; Anthropic has higher relative contract value and potentially greater margin stability over time.

 

 

In the short term, large AI IPOs may divert institutional capital from crypto markets during peak allocation windows. Over the medium term, successful AI IPOs validate the AI investment thesis and historically correlate with increased interest in AI-related crypto tokens, particularly those tied to decentralized compute, AI agent infrastructure, and on-chain AI protocols.

 

 

MEXC offers the largest selection of AI-themed crypto trading pairs available on any centralized exchange, with 0% Maker fees on spot and 100% proof-of-reserves verification for user asset security.

 

 

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or financial recommendations. Cryptocurrency and equity markets are highly volatile, and all investments carry the risk of loss, including total loss of principal. Readers should conduct their own independent research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. References to any company, token, or asset in this article do not represent an endorsement or recommendation by MEXC. Past performance is not indicative of future results. IPO timelines and valuations mentioned are based on publicly available reporting as of the publication date and are subject to change.

 

 

This article was produced by the MEXC Crypto Pulse Research Team, a group of analysts and content specialists covering the intersection of global macro, technology capital markets, and digital assets. The team has tracked AI and blockchain market dynamics since 2021. This article was last updated on June 24, 2026.