Markets JUN 19, 2026

OpenAI files confidential S-1 as Anthropic and SpaceX crowd a $3.6T AI IPO pipeline

OpenAI submitted draft paperwork Monday, one week after Anthropic filed at a $965B valuation and days before SpaceX's record listing prints.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

OpenAI confirmed Monday that it has submitted a confidential S-1 to the SEC, the second of three AI-era giants to queue for the public markets in a single fortnight. The company’s own statement reads like a tell: “We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it.” It added that “it may be a while.”

The triangulation is the story. Anthropic filed confidentially on June 1 at a $965 billion valuation, eclipsing OpenAI’s $852 billion March round for the first time, per Fortune. SpaceX is set to begin trading Friday at an expected $1.8 trillion, what CBS called the biggest IPO ever. Wedbush Securities analysts captured the moment in a Tuesday note: “The floodgates for the IPO market are officially open with three major AI conglomerates set to go public later this year.” Combined pipeline valuation, per Bloomberg: roughly $3.6 trillion.

The numbers underneath are doing real work. OpenAI told investors in March it was generating $2 billion in monthly revenue; CFO Sarah Friar has since guided Q2 to $10.9 billion, more than double the prior quarter, citing a “vertical wall of demand.” ChatGPT now has 900 million weekly active users. Anthropic, meanwhile, has grown annualized revenue 80-fold and expects to clear $50 billion run-rate by the end of next month, after a $65 billion funding round.

Sequencing matters here in a way the press releases won’t say out loud. Bloomberg’s read is that whichever firm taps US public markets first secures “an immediate advantage in securing access to the chips, data centers and talent” needed to keep training frontier models. The IPO isn’t an exit. It’s a procurement strategy.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are working OpenAI’s listing. Friar has signaled a retail tranche, and a judge’s recent dismissal of Elon Musk’s suit against OpenAI conveniently cleared what CBS termed a potential derailer. Musk’s own AI vehicle, xAI, sits inside the SpaceX entity pricing Friday. “AI needs to garner trust in everything that we do,” Friar said. The bookrunners are pricing something else.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.