The AI IPOs
27 bullish · 15 bearish · 14 neutral · exact words, dated and sourced
+25OpenAI, Anthropic, and the trillion-dollar listing question: when they go public, at what price, and who is buying.
The count, last 30 days: 13 bullish, 3 bearish. The tape leans bullish. A count, not a verdict.
The tape
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What the people who move markets are saying about this, in their own words. These are views on the record, not scored bets: when a call here grows a number and a deadline, it moves to the scoreboard. Newest first.
Bullish
Wilson says issuance windows are less wide open than 6-12 months ago, with some lower-quality deterioration, but buying demand for new issuance remains ample
So I don't think it's as wide open perhaps as it was six, eight, 12 months ago. But I do think we still have quite a bit of buying demand for new issuance.
Neutral
Campling reads Anthropic dropping the Descartes deal as fiscal discipline consistent with preparing for its IPO, with news possibly late this month.
it suggests that with this fiscal discipline that perhaps again it's another sign they get they're preparing for the IPO.
Bearish
Booth advises not rushing to buy IPOs at listing; on average investors do better waiting for price discovery.
I think there's no rush to buy the stock on the IPO. Clearly, the winners, you miss out on something. But if you take all of them together, you're better off just kind of waiting and let the market settle and then jump in.
Neutral
Robert Lee (Bloomberg Intelligence) tells Bloomberg that Anthropic and OpenAI, alongside SpaceX, are the most hotly anticipated IPOs globally this year.
Alongside SpaceX, obviously, Enthropic and OpenAI, I should say, are the most hotly anticipated IPOs globally this year for obvious reasons.
Bullish
Robert Lee (Bloomberg Intelligence) tells Bloomberg that Anthropic's reported $11.5bn Q2 revenue and adjusted operating profitability show strong top-line momentum and bottom-line traction in a software sector that is loss-making in aggregate.
the company has clearly got strong top line momentum and is gaining solid bottom line traction in a sector on the software side that remains lost making in aggregate.
Bullish
Stephanie Link (Hightower) tells CNBC that 2026 is on pace for a record ~$4 trillion of M&A, part of why she stays constructive.
we're on pace to do $4 trillion in M&A this year, which would be a new record.
Bullish
Rachel Metz (Bloomberg AI reporter) thinks at least one major US AI-lab IPO (OpenAI or Anthropic) is reasonably likely in the not-too-distant future, possibly two.
it is certainly possible as we look ahead that we will have one, possibly two, but I think one is reasonably likely given what we know thus far
Neutral
Matt Bloxham (Bloomberg Intelligence) tells Guy Johnson the expected IPO order has flipped and the smart money now has Anthropic listing before OpenAI.
I think that the smart money right now would be on Anthropic coming first and OpenAI following.
Neutral
Matt Bloxham (Bloomberg Intelligence) tells Guy Johnson that with no profits, OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs will be valued on EV/sales as SpaceX was, so near-term revenue figures drive the multiple.
enterprise value to sales is the multiple in which these values would get struck. That's how deals will get struck. That's how SpaceX happened. It's how anthropic will go. That's how open AI will go.
Bullish
Gavin Baker tells Calacanis the FT's $2T Anthropic IPO figure is a banker sandbag: he expects a responsible ~$2T pricing that could trade to ~$3T.
Maybe that is 2 trillion. Maybe it is 2 and it trades to 3. But you just got to remember these leaks are always coming from the bankers
Bullish
David Sacks tells Calacanis Anthropic's 10x/yr revenue ramp can continue, though compute/energy limits and share loss are legitimate questions.
Well, I think it can continue, although it is a legitimate question because if you're ending the year at, let's say, $100 billion run rate up 10x plus year over year
Bullish
David Sacks tells Calacanis he hears OpenAI's growth is now 20%+ month over month after its coding pivot, a 10x annualized pace matching Anthropic.
which if you extrapolate it out over 12 months, would be a 10x growth rate. So you're now seeing OpenAI growing as fast as Anthropic
David Sacks · Craft Ventures / All-In Podcast · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVzYGVJ8zUk @11:26 ↗Bearish
Jason Calacanis tells Sacks and Baker Anthropic's growth slows sharply in 2027 as corporate America adopts far cheaper open-source models: no way to $1T, maybe a triple to $300-400B.
I think anthropics growth rate is going to slow considerably next year. And it's been obviously on a terror. There's no way they get to a trillion in revenue next year. I think maybe they could, you know, triple get to three or 400 million.
Bullish
Gavin Baker tells Calacanis he takes the over on Wall Street's 2027 Anthropic revenue consensus by 25-30%, assuming underwriters stand back, declining to take the over on $500B or $1T outright.
I'm going to take the over whatever the wall street consensus is for 27, which I don't know. I'll take a 25 to 30% over on that
Bullish
David Sacks tells Calacanis Anthropic exiting 2027 at $400-500B ARR seems very comfortable.
I actually was going to say four to 500 billion does exit ARR for next year. Seems very comfortable.
David Sacks · Craft Ventures / All-In Podcast · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVzYGVJ8zUk @51:47 ↗Bullish
Gavin Baker tells Calacanis and Sacks the Anthropic S-1 will be pivotal and will upend macro/value investors who assume AI tokens are subsidized.
But I do think the Anthropic S1 is going to be really important. And I think it's going to break a lot of people's brains.
Bullish
Gavin Baker tells Calacanis and Sacks that, reading public signals, Anthropic is cash-generating and profitable, open-source tokens are profitable, and OpenAI will be imminently.
They're profitable. Open source tokens are profitable. Anthropic is profitable. OpenAI, if they're not generating cash, they will be eminently.
Bullish
Dan Ives says OpenAI and Anthropic going public will further solidify the foundation of the AI revolution.
But that's why open AI and anthropic, when you think about as they go public and there is-- that just further solidifies the foundation for the AI revolution.
Bearish
Ed Elson says the staffing exodus shows OpenAI is 'not going great'.
then the signs at OpenAI are quite plain to see. It's not going great.
Neutral
Dibo tells Lacqua 2026 US equity supply (IPOs, follow-ons, lock-up expiries) will be a record ~$1.1tn, though normal as a share of market cap.
all of that should amount to total equity supply of about one point one trillion dollars in 2026 which is a record.
Neutral
Dibo tells Lacqua Goldman found no statistically significant link between IPO activity and forward US equity returns, so heavy issuance is not a reason to stay out.
we have looked at whether IPO activity correlates with the forward returns of the U.S. equity market historically. And we found no statistically significant evidence of that.
S&P 500 since this was said: ▼ -2.0% · 7,748 → 7,592 · as of 2026-09-10
Bullish
Mitchell Green says OpenAI and Anthropic need to become public companies given their capex needs, and he wants to see their S-1s.
Look, you see how much money these companies are spending on CapEx. They need to be public companies.
Neutral
Paul Meeks (Freedom Capital Markets) tells Bloomberg he expects Anthropic to IPO in 2026 while OpenAI pushes its IPO to 2027, possibly late 2027, raising doubt about OpenAI paying its partner commitments.
open A.I. looks like they're pushing their IPO until 2027 where anthropic comes this year. And I think open A.I. IPO might actually be late in 2027.
Neutral
Neil Campling tells Bonnie Quinn OpenAI's employee tender at the same valuation as five months ago is a surprise given AI growth talk.
It's the same valuation as the last raising five months ago. So there's no increase to the valuation, which perhaps is a surprise given all the growth that we're talking about in the AI sphere.
Bullish
Direct answer to the anchor's challenge 'why are we valuing anthropic at nearly a trillion dollars? What's the moat?' @21:07; he cites first-party products ('cloud code, cloud co-work... cloud tag' - whisper for Claude Code/Cowork/Tag) @21:32, calls Kimi 'competitive with, I'd say, one generation prior' @22:01, and flags 'significant new releases coming out' from the labs @22:08.
“I think both anthropic and open AI have multiple moats. The first is they have very significant revenues. These are the fastest growing companies in human history.”
Bearish
Reasoning: Moonshot's Kimi K3 'outstrips most of the frontier models on many parameters, except for the two leading ones from anthropic and open AI' @0:46, and cheap open-source Chinese models mean 'there may be some pricing pressure on what they're able to charge their customers' @1:39.
“as we see open AI and anthropic try to go public in the near future, both of them want to get valuations that are above a trillion dollars each. That may be a little bit more challenging today.”
Bearish
His formal prediction of the episode, teased in the cold open at 0:25 (duplicate of this in-context occurrence). Full mechanism @35:01: OpenAI acquires Sierra and installs Brett Taylor as their CEO and kicks Altman up to chairman; timeframe restated @35:11: I would say it's six months. You know, it might be 12 but Sam Altman is on the green mile. Repeated as his prediction in the week-ahead segment @64:06.
“We're gonna have a new CEO at OpenAI within the next six months.”
Bullish
Anthropic is reportedly scheduling investor meetings for a listing as soon as October (@8:04, @16:29: Supposedly that listing's gonna come in October, which is very soon), while OpenAI is tabling theirs, and DeepSeek is preparing its own IPO. Ed reframes the race: Now the question is, will DeepSeek get out before open AI? @17:27. Kalsi is whisper's rendering of Kalshi.
“It's clear that Anthropic is going to win that race. In fact, if we look on Kalsi, the odds that they will announce an IPO before 2027 are up to 74%.”
Bullish
Sacks relays Gavin Baker's view while arguing Anthropic is 'one of the biggest of the big tech companies' with a trillion-dollar mark today and the leading AI company by revenue.
“Gavin Baker thinks it'll be at three trillion after the IPO.”
Bullish
Chamath argues AI-native operators + capital (Stripe/Advent/Block for PayPal, Ryan Cohen/eBay, Bending Spoons rollups) will revive 'flaccid' founder-less digital businesses; he expects a big wave of such mega deals over the next couple years.
“I will make a prediction. I think that eBay and PayPal are probably the beginning of a wave of mega deals”
Bullish
Citing Ryan Cohen's eBay bid and Josh Kushner/General Catalyst accounting rollups, Freeberg argues AI-native operators will keep acquiring mature, founder-less, over-spending digital businesses to revive them with AI.
“I think there's going to be more of these kinds of deals.”
Bearish
Pushing back on people who 'extrapolate anthropics ARR' from three straight ~10x years to 'a trillion dollar' figure @13:47; sees ~$200B ARR next year as plausible but the 10x era ending as competition and Jevons-paradox commoditization arrive: 'the model providers are going to have an uphill battle from here compared to the last two years.' @22:32.
“I don't think they're going to get to those numbers. Do I think they could get to 200 next year? Yeah, well, that's a doubling. That's not 10 times.”
Bearish
Referring to the big private names heading to market: 'if they're trading at 20 to 70 times revenue uh when by comparison google went public at eight and a half times revenue' @22:20. Oxbow skipped the SpaceX IPO, which he says is already 'down 16 from where it closed uh after the first day of trading' @7:29; his table shows hot IPOs usually get cheaper within a year.
“these seem more like all of the optimism and the best case scenarios are priced in which we understand all the enthusiasm around the ai trade but that doesn't leave a lot of upside left”
Bullish
'we're likely going to see in pickup and distributions on the buyout side... and a massive pickup in distributions within VC and growth because... about 70% of IPO activity is usually VC backed' @29:08-29:25, for an industry 'starved of distributions over the past 10 years' @29:30. She also argues 'private equity is a bigger representation of the real economy than the public markets are' so any AI productivity boost accrues to PE @28:14-28:27.
“2026 is actually on pace to be the largest year in terms of capital market activity that we've seen over the past 10 years and could even be what we saw in 2021.”
Neutral
On Apple's trade-secrets suit against OpenAI and the ~40 post-phone device designs he says Qualcomm is helping competitors build: 'Any way they can stall someone that might be a competitor to theirs, obviously, they're not beyond litigation.' (@6:29)
“you don't sue someone you're not worried about”
Bearish
Her own editorial read on the Apple trade-secret suit; asserts on tape OpenAI is actively looking to go public
“For Altman, though, this is the latest distraction. It is a headwind at a time when this company is looking to go public, guys.”
Neutral
ADVICE TO THE LABS, not investor sell advice: IPO now, 'at a huge price', before the token-cost reckoning he describes becomes visible; his own CTO's numbers (costs doubling every 45 days, ~5% productivity gain) are the setup
“So I suspect that if you can get out now, you should get out now before all of that starts to seep into the water table.”
Bullish
Stated house position; he is an investor in both labs
“altimeter would be a buyer at scale and that size in both of those IPOs at three trillion.”
Bullish
On an OpenAI IPO above $1 trillion
“So can they get out at over a trillion on that type of revenue growth being one of the two frontier premier labs? I think the answer to that is yes.”
Bearish
Reaffirming his January call that OpenAI runs out of money within 18 months
“Yeah, I do hold to my prediction. Back in January, the burn rate was just crazy.”
Bearish
On OpenAI's five-year internal burn projection
“And even though Sam Altman is a magician, when it comes to raising money, he wasn't going to be raising $660 billion, which is what the internally projected burn rate was for the next five years”
Bearish
On the $122B raise: about two-thirds was conditional promises or payment in kind, he says
“the actual real money was a small share of the total fundraise, which raises the question, why announce this massive 122 billion headline number? When anyone who digs into it can see it's rubbish?”
Bearish
On OpenAI's IPO delay to 2027; invokes the WeWork 2019 precedent
“if it tries to do the IPO, it may not succeed and then it's really cooked.”
Bullish
Contrasting with OpenAI
“I think Anthropic has been way more laser focused on the part of the market that makes sense, which is the enterprise part, and just better managed.”
Bearish
His sharpened call: an OpenAI bubble, not a general AI bubble; possible buyers he names: Amazon, Microsoft
“I'm just saying there's a 50% chance that by next summer we'll find they couldn't really go public in the private markets, they can't raise enough money, and they have to sell themselves at some sort of discount to another company.”
Bullish
Lee says OpenAI or Anthropic IPOs would be very successful if they went public.
I think if open AI was to go public or anthropic, their IPOs would be very, very successful
Bullish
Galloway tells Elson that Bending Spoons, not SpaceX at 22%, will have the biggest first-day pop of any tech IPO in June 2026.
I actually think, and this is a prediction, the best performing one-day IPO, the biggest pop of a tech company of an IPO in June is not SpaceX at 22%.
Neutral
Galloway tells Elson Bending Spoons did about $250M revenue with a $120M loss in Q1 2025 and over $600M with a $27M profit in Q1 2026.
This is a company that Q1 of 2025 did about $250 million, lost $120 million. And Q1 of 2026 is going to do over $600 million and just went profitable to $27 million.
Bullish
Galloway tells Elson Bending Spoons' roughly $19 billion IPO valuation, six to eight times revenue with 88% recurring, looks cheap in this market.
going out at a valuation of around $19 billion. So technically six to eight times revenues, which looks cheap in this market.
Bearish
Visser says model companies face a near-term problem (capacity, price competition, DeepSeek), which is why they are rushing to raise/IPO.
The model situation is going to be a problem in my opinion for the near term
Bullish
Thomas Laffont (Coatue) tells the All-In Summit he would happily own the top private-company index (SpaceX, Stripe, Anthropic, Databricks, Revolut, ByteDance, Anduril) for the next decade-plus.
I'd feel pretty comfortable owning this index if I could for the next decade plus.
Neutral
Thomas Laffont tells the All-In Summit that the big private outcomes (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) will be public within roughly 12 months (hedged).
And those outcomes will be public within, it seems like a 12 month period.
Bullish
Thomas Laffont tells the All-In Summit that today's AI mega-cap private valuations are backed by real, profitable, fast-growing companies, unlike 2000 or 2021, while the public market will be the test.
So the one pushback I would have just on the valuation argument is these are not fake companies.
Bearish
Marc Benioff tells All-In that private software company valuations are fantasy until someone pays, and such companies should focus on revenue, cash flow and profitability.
you wanna be in a private market, your valuation is fantasy land until somebody's actually gonna pay you
Neutral
Chamath Palihapitiya tells All-In that once SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI go public there will be a wave of lawsuits among layered-SPV sellers; treats those IPOs as given (no date).
By the way, and I will guarantee you this, once SpaceX goes public, once Anthropic goes public, once OpenAI goes public, you're going to see a litany of these lawsuits back and forth between the purveyors of these SPVs.
Neutral
Gerstner cites Reuters reporting 'that OpenAI may be planning to go public late twenty six or twenty seven' at a rumored ~$1T. Altman denies any date or decision ('We don't have like a date in mind... We don't have a decision to do this'), while conceding an eventual IPO is where things go; he later says retail access is 'probably the single most appealing thing about it to me.'
“No, no, no. We don't we don't have anything that specific. I'm a realist. I assume it will happen someday. But that was I don't know why people write these reports.”
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We write down what public figures predict, in their exact words, and check the result when the deadline arrives. Every line links to its source. How we score · Corrections · The scoreboard · The data
© 2026 Pundit Rumble · independent and unaffiliated · updated every market morning · not investment advice.
We write down what public figures predict, in their exact words, and check the result when the deadline arrives. Every line links to its source. How we score · Corrections · The scoreboard · The data
© 2026 Pundit Rumble · independent and unaffiliated · updated every market morning · not investment advice.