OpenAI confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, making the ChatGPT maker the third major artificial-intelligence company to enter the public-listing process in roughly a week, behind Anthropic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Bloomberg pegs the combined pipeline at about $3.6 trillion, which would make it the largest cluster of IPOs on record.

The numbers move faster than the institutions meant to absorb them. OpenAI’s March funding round of $122 billion valued the company at $852 billion, a figure that CFO Sarah Friar told The Associated Press in April would slot it among the 15 largest companies in the S&P 500. Anthropic surpassed that mark in May at a $965 billion valuation, on $47 billion of run-rate revenue. SpaceX, which began its IPO roadshow last week and is set to start trading Friday, is valued at roughly $1.8 trillion. Earlier this year it merged with xAI, folding Musk’s model lab into the launch vehicle in a way that’s not subtle.

OpenAI’s own statement is careful. “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. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.” The company described having “recently submitted a confidential S-1.” Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are working on the potential listing. Anthropic used near-identical language, citing “the option to go public after the SEC completes its review.”

That’s the optionality framing, and it’s doing real work. A confidential S-1 doesn’t commit anyone to a date; it stages the regulatory clock so that when conditions favor a debut, the runway is already lit.

The business case is loud enough. OpenAI told Wall Street that monthly revenue has reached $2 billion, double the figure from one quarter prior, with more than 900 million weekly ChatGPT users. Whether those metrics survive the disclosure regime is the actual question. “Expectations that seem manageable in private markets can become relentless under the glare of public ownership,” said Nigel Green, chief executive of deVere Group.

The political layer is already loading. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed giving the public a 50 percent stake in major A.I. companies. And days before the filing, a federal judge adopted an advisory jury’s verdict rejecting Musk’s 2024 suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, clearing one of the last live legal threats to the company’s corporate structure on its way to the tape.

The 2000 dot-com cohort went public to fund growth. This cohort is going public to launder private valuations into something the index funds are forced to buy.

Sources