According to the Financial Times (and pretty much everyone else), 2026 has the potential to be the biggest IPO year in history. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all could go public this year; the proceeds from those three combined “would outstrip the total haul from about 200 US IPOs in 2025.”
Were any one of the three companies to successfully complete a public offering this year, they’d not only make thousands of lawyers, investors, bankers, and employees very rich, they’d also be setting a record: Each company is already privately valued at well above the benchmark for the largest public offering in history, which was Alibaba’s 2014 debut at $170 billion.
OpenAI is currently valued at $500 billion, though recent reports say a new financing round may increase that number to $750-$800 billion. Anthropic’s last round valued the company at $183 billion, though its most recent deal with Nvidia and Microsoft reportedly valued the company at nearly double that: $350 billion. And SpaceX’s last round pegged it at $800 billion, and the company is reportedly floating an IPO valuation of $1.5 trillion.
These are … bonkers numbers, both hard to contextualize and even harder to justify against future profits, which is how public companies are usually judged. All have significant revenues, but both OpenAI and Anthropic are reputed to be losing billions of dollars a year. Of the three, only SpaceX is profitable, but those profits are not publicly reported – estimates vary from $3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion last year. Even if those numbers double in 2026, to $9 billion, I’m not sure they support a $1.5 trillion IPO. Then again, if the market stays frothy, I’d not bet against it.
All that said, the company I’d predict will file for a public offering this year is Anthropic. Last month it hired one of the Valley’s most seasoned law firms to advise it on its financing options, and its CFO, hired in mid-2024, helped take Airbnb public.
But that’s not really why I think Anthropic will test the public markets in 2026. Instead, I think it has to do with the essence of its corporate culture – its DNA, if you will. Anthropic was founded by a breakaway group of OpenAI employees who were concerned that their previous employer was prioritizing commercial products over AI safety. When they formed Anthropic, they created an unusual governance structure, the Long-Term Benefit Trust, which will appoint a majority of Board members by next year. Like OpenAI, Anthropic is also structured as a Public Benefit Corporation, but unlike OpenAI, Anthropic is not financially lashed to the mast of a major tech player. Microsoft owns 27 percent of OpenAI, but no single tech giant owns more than 20 percent of Anthropic – and that matters, because it means neither Amazon nor Google, both of which are major investors, must report Anthropic’s financials in their own public filings.
That last paragraph got a bit hairy, but the net of it is this: Anthropic has a cleaner structure, cap table, and set of relationships than OpenAI, which should allow it to be more nimble in its journey to becoming a public company. In addition, I sense Anthropic’s corporate culture would embrace the responsibilities and reporting requirements inherent to being a public company. Anthropic also has a better financial story to tell – it’s been focused from day one on the enterprise market, where it is a leader, and is projected to attain profitability far faster than OpenAI. Not to mention – and this is pure speculation – I’d wager Anthropic’s founders would like nothing better than to steal OpenAI’s thunder by being first to tap the public markets. Presuming the economy doesn’t falter (and that is by no means certain), I’d wager Anthropic will file to go public in 2026.
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This is the second in a series of post I’ll be doing on predictions for 2026. The first is here. When I get to #1, I’ll post a roundup like I usually do.