OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX will soon have a new boss to answer to: Wall Street.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI is the latest AI giant to announce plans to go public, coming after Anthropic said it confidentially filed for an IPO last week. SpaceX, which includes Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, is set to make its market debut on Friday. The three public offerings are expected to provide the closest look yet at the state of the AI market – and potentially rack up hundreds of billions of dollars in massive stock sales.
It also means their AI businesses, which are already approaching valuations in the trillion-dollar range, will be subject to more scrutiny than ever as Wall Street demands explosive growth every three months.
“Expectations that seem manageable in private markets can become relentless under the glare of public ownership,” Nigel Green, CEO of financial advisory firm deVere Group, said in an email to CNN.
Wall Street already has sky-high expectations for AI, leaving no room for anything short of blockbuster growth each quarter. For example, Broadcom, which previously struck partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, reported jaw-dropping earnings: revenue growth of 48 percent for the second quarter and expected semiconductor growth of 180 percent compared to last year. But that wasn’t enough to impress investors; Broadcom shares were down over 13 percent last week, marking its worst week since September 2024.
AI chip stocks sank along with it late last week, with the Nasdaq falling for three consecutive days and the S&P 500 experiencing its worst day since October. An exchange-traded fund that tracks memory chip stocks was down 15 percent last week.
“People want more,” Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein tracking the semiconductor market, told CNN last week when discussing chip stocks. “They always want more.”
Even Nvidia, the world’s most valuable public company, has faced similar scrutiny. In January 2025, the AI chipmaker lost a record $600 billion in market value in a single day, after DeepSeek, a new Chinese competitor, emerged in the market.
More scrutiny of AI
OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be held to a similar standard, with the state of their businesses serving as the bellwethers of AI industry growth. Wall Street will also be looking for signs that both companies have the cash to back up their massive spending on AI infrastructure.
Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have provided some signals about their growth.
But they’ve chosen to share those statistics publicly rather than out of legal responsibility.
OpenAI said it raised $122 billion in March, pushing its valuation to $852 billion. It also said that month that it’s generating $2 billion in revenue every month, a jump from the $1 billion it was previously generating every quarter.
ChatGPT also became the fastest app to reach one billion users last month, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. It took apps like Google Maps, TikTok and YouTube five to eight years to achieve that milestone, while ChatGPT reached it in about three, the firm said.
Anthropic’s valuation jumped from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May, surpassing OpenAI, the company said in May. It also said last month that it achieved $47 billion in run-rate revenue, a metric that estimates future annual revenue based on current financial data. More businesses used Anthropic than OpenAI for the first time in May, according to fintech firm Ramp.
The IPO could indicate OpenAI and Anthropic have grown confident enough in their respective paths to profitability to face Wall Street. OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment regarding the timing of their IPO filings.
But the numbers are just the beginning. Analysts will likely grill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the future of their businesses and upcoming products on earnings calls, looking for signs that they have endless potential for growth.
That means they may have to answer publicly about things like delays in upcoming model releases, and how they plan to translate those models into paid products. Product pivots, like OpenAI’s decision to shutter its video app Sora, will likely face much more questioning.
“Private investors can back a vision and wait years for results,” Green wrote. “Public markets rarely offer that luxury.”
