Anthropic has hired Wilson Sonsini to prepare for a potential 2026 IPO while simultaneously raising a major private round (Bloomberg, The Information).
OpenAI is taking similar steps: the company has reportedly begun internal preparation for a 2026 listing, including discussions with banks, legal advisors, and early examinations of financial disclosures (Reuters, FT, Bloomberg).
These are concrete moves from two of the most capital-intensive AI companies — not speculation.
Private Capital Has Hit Its Limits
- AI scale-up looks more like energy infrastructure than software.
- IDC and Gartner estimate AI-related data-center capex in the hundreds of billions for 2025.
- Bloomberg Intelligence projects multi-trillion-dollar cumulative AI infra investment through 2030.
OpenAI and Anthropic both face heavy compute and power requirements. Private rounds alone cannot fund frontier model development at this scale. This is the structural reason top AI firms are preparing public filings.
IPO Activity Is Already Back
The US IPO market — frozen in 2022–2023 — has materially reopened:
- IPO volume in Q1–Q3 2025 nearly matched the entire year of 2024 (Renaissance Capital).
- ServiceTitan surged more than 40% on its December debut (WSJ).
- Anthropic and OpenAI both advancing IPO groundwork for 2026 (Bloomberg, Reuters, FT).
This activity shows a functioning pipeline, not a hypothetical one.
Why AI Is Driving the Shift to Public Markets
Major tech companies continue massive infrastructure expansion:
- AI capex for 2025 is measured in the hundreds of billions (IDC, Gartner).
- OpenAI’s annualized revenue has grown sharply, but the company still operates with substantial losses due to compute costs (FT).
- Microsoft has paused or slowed select data-center builds, signalling early supply constraints (Bloomberg).
These pressures create a simple reality: Only public markets can supply capital at the required scale.
Risks the Market Is Closely Watching
Monetization: OpenAI, Anthropic, and others show strong revenue growth but remain capital-intensive and unprofitable (FT).
Infrastructure bottlenecks: GPU availability, power constraints, and paused hyperscaler projects (Bloomberg).
Macro sensitivity: IPO activity reacts immediately to liquidity conditions; any broad market shock could slow issuance.
These risks are real and visible in filings, analyst notes, and infrastructure reports.
Bottom Line
Between Anthropic’s IPO preparation and OpenAI’s internal listing work, the direction of travel is clear:
late-stage AI companies are returning to public markets because they have to.
With IPO activity rising, strong debut performance, and unprecedented infrastructure spending needs, the tech financing environment has already shifted.
The IPO window isn’t “about to open.”
It’s open.