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Market News

OpenAI Files for IPO, Joining Anthropic and SpaceX in the Biggest Tech Listing Rush in History

Anthropic filed last week. SpaceX starts trading Thursday. OpenAI announced its confidential S-1 late Monday. Three of the biggest companies in the world are heading to public markets in the same window. Here's what that actually means.

Market MunchiesΒ·Jun 9, 2026Β·5 min read
OpenAI IPO

OpenAI took an unusual step late Monday: rather than waiting for the news to leak, the company got ahead of it.

"We recently submitted a confidential S-1," OpenAI said. "We expect it to leak so we're just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company."

The signal is clear enough. One of the world's most valuable private companies is moving toward public markets.

That would be a major story on its own. But OpenAI is not arriving alone.

Anthropic filed June 1 after raising money at a $965 billion valuation. SpaceX is expected to price Thursday and begin trading Friday at a targeted valuation around $1.75 trillion. OpenAI is now in the queue too, targeting a listing as early as September at a valuation that could exceed $1 trillion, per Reuters.

Three of the most valuable private companies on Earth are moving toward public markets in the same window.

OpenAI is not just testing whether investors still love AI. It is testing how much they can stomach at once.

The five numbers that matter

  • $852 billion: OpenAI's valuation after its March 2026 private round, backed by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank
  • $25 billion: annualized revenue run rate as of early 2026, up from $2 billion in 2023
  • Negative 122%: non-GAAP operating margin in Q1 2026 β€” for every dollar of revenue, the company spent $2.22
  • $14 billion: projected non-GAAP operating loss for 2026
  • 2030: the year OpenAI has told investors it expects to reach cash-flow breakeven

The bull case

OpenAI is one of the fastest-growing software businesses ever built. Revenue has grown from $2 billion annually in 2023 to roughly $24 billion annualized by early 2026. Enterprise customers now account for more than 40% of revenue, on pace to reach parity with consumer by year-end. The company reportedly capped its revenue-share arrangement with Microsoft at $38 billion through 2030, down from a prior trajectory of approximately $135 billion, per The Information via Reuters. And Musk lost his lawsuit against the company in May, removing a major legal overhang around the public benefit corporation restructuring that makes the listing viable.

The product is real. The user base is real. The revenue growth is real.

The bear case

The valuation math is uncomfortable. At $852 billion, OpenAI is priced at roughly 35 times its annualized revenue β€” for a business projecting $14 billion in non-GAAP losses and years from cash-flow breakeven. The GAAP loss figure in the public filing will be the audited number investors actually have to underwrite β€” and estimates suggest it runs materially higher than the headline non-GAAP figure.

The competitive pressure is also real. Anthropic's Claude has taken meaningful share in AI coding. Google's Gemini and Meta's open-source Llama models offer free alternatives that compress what OpenAI can charge. OpenAI's developer market share has declined year-on-year, per Sacra's April 2026 analysis.

Bridgewater partner Greg Jensen reportedly told clients the implied multiple is "priced for a monopoly outcome that does not yet exist."

The question markets haven't fully answered

Goldman Sachs projects total 2026 IPO proceeds could reach $160 billion. SpaceX alone would represent nearly half of that annual total. Add Anthropic and OpenAI and the three companies are collectively targeting more than $200 billion in a single market window.

That is the structural question no single IPO article is asking clearly enough: does the institutional investment community have the capacity to absorb three mega-AI listings at record valuations in rapid succession β€” while also funding their ongoing capital needs, holding lock-up risk, and managing portfolios already heavily weighted toward AI?

History offers limited precedent. The dotcom era had waves of large listings, but none at this valuation scale or this concentration of sector and timing.

What retail investors should watch

The confidential filing means full financial details stay private until approximately 15 days before the investor roadshow. The earliest realistic window for the public S-1 is late July or August, with a listing potentially in September.

Until the public prospectus lands, investors are pricing a business on fundraising disclosures, not audited accounts. The GAAP loss figure that arrives in the public filing will be the legally binding number β€” and it may surprise investors who have only seen the non-GAAP headline.

SpaceX prices Thursday. Trading begins Friday, if the timeline holds. The market's appetite for mega-AI at mega-valuations will start to show up in real prices very soon.

The bottom line

The question is not whether OpenAI is a real business. It obviously is.

The question is whether public markets will pay 35 to 40 times forward revenue for a company projecting massive losses β€” while two other mega-AI listings compete for the same institutional capital in the same window.

SpaceX prices Thursday and begins trading Friday. The rest arrives in September, if the timeline holds.

Sources