Trillion-dollar-valued AI giants stage IPO "first mover game"! Anthropic submits application secretively in advance, OpenAI faces pricing power struggle.

On June 1st, Anthropic announced that it had secretly submitted an IPO registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with a post-investment valuation of about $965 billion, leaving behind its competitor OpenAI ($852 billion) in the race to go public. From model competitions to valuation competitions, and now to the "race to submit first" competition, the two AI giants are setting the battlefield on the public market - this is not just a battle of timing, but a deep game about the pricing power of "leading AI companies". Shift in dynamics: Anthropic submits first, overtaking OpenAI On June 1st, the AI giant Anthropic officially announced that the company had secretly submitted a draft registration statement for its initial public offering (IPO) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, marking a new phase in this highly anticipated AI IPO race. This confidential filing process allows the company to undergo SEC review first without disclosing financial data and business details publicly. In a statement, Anthropic stated that the submission of the prospectus "gives us the right to go public after the SEC completes its review," and emphasized that the proposed IPO "will depend on market conditions and other factors." By submitting first, Anthropic instantly gained the initiative in the market narrative. Just under two weeks ago, the market widely expected OpenAI to be the first to start the IPO process - most participants predicted that OpenAI would submit its IPO application before Anthropic. The sudden shift in the competitive situation reflects a quiet change in the valuation landscape of the two AI giants. In late May, Anthropic completed a Series H financing round of $65 billion, bringing its post-investment valuation to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI for the first time. OpenAI, on the other hand, completed a $122 billion financing round in March, with a post-investment valuation of $852 billion. The valuations of both companies are approaching the trillion-dollar mark, placing them in the elite club of companies that dominate the global stock market. The significance of this early submission goes beyond just the timing of financing. Analyst Gil Luria from D.A. Davidson bluntly stated that Anthropic's early move to go public is not only for financing considerations, but the core strategic intent is to "set the financial disclosure standards for advanced AI models and bias the standards towards its own model." In other words, the first to go public will define the logic of industry financial disclosure first, gaining an advantage in discourse. However, submitting the application in secrecy does not mean that the actual listing date has been determined. Anthropic has not disclosed the offering size and terms, and the actual listing will still depend on market conditions and the SEC review process. This means that even though they submitted first, there is still uncertainty about who will complete the public listing first. First-mover advantage: fundraising window, capital positioning, and narrative power struggle Going public first is not just about reputation. Three market participants - SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI - have huge capital needs, limited space, and the logic of "first come, first served" is dominating market expectations. Data from Dealogic shows that as of May 26th, global IPO financing had reached $87.5 billion, the highest level for the same period since 2021. But an open IPO window does not mean unlimited capital availability. At the same time, SpaceX is pushing ahead with an IPO valuing the company at $17.5 trillion to $2 trillion, with a target fundraising size of $50 billion to $75 billion, which could start trading as early as mid-June. If SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI - three large IPOs - debut in the same window, it will test the market's "digestive capacity" to the limit. Kat Liu, Vice President of IPOX, analyzes that Anthropic's submission shortly after SpaceX allows them to take advantage of the favorable window while investors have a strong interest in AI and growth stocks. In addition, compared to SpaceX's valuation, Anthropic's announced valuation of $965 billion "does not look as aggressive when examined independently." Matthew Kennedy, Senior IPO Market Strategist at Renaissance Capital, points out that "the banks tell them now is the right time," with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 Index recording double-digit gains this year, making market sentiment favorable for IPOs. However, he also warns that once both companies go public, the advantage of going public first may gradually diminish. From a capital positioning perspective, whoever can attract hundreds of billions of dollars of investment faster will gain an advantage in chip purchases, data center construction, and talent acquisition. Kennedy further points out, "Whoever goes public first can set the tone, while the one who comes later may be seen as an imitator and ultimately forced to compare with the first to go public in marketing discussions." Meanwhile, SoftBank's massive bet on OpenAI adds a crucial background to this IPO competition. As of the end of March, SoftBank had accumulated unrealized gains of about $45 billion on its investment in OpenAI. But insiders at SoftBank expressed concerns about Masayoshi Son's strategy of concentrating too much capital in one company, fearing a repeat of the WeWork debacle. At the same time, other mainstream private equity firms have recently made multiple bets in the big model race. For example, in Anthropic's $65 billion Series H round, its investors include Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, as well as Capital Group, Coatue, Blackstone, Brookfield, DST Global, Fidelity, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Lightspeed, and Temasek. The narrative of capital titans is shifting from "SoftBank's massive investment" to "top institutions going all-in," adding complex competition factors to the pricing of OpenAI and Anthropic's IPO. First-mover worries: disclosure risks and free "observation options" Being the first to submit does not only bring advantages. When a company is the first to submit public documents, it means that the true financial condition, cost structure, customer concentration, and margin rates of cutting-edge AI companies are placed under the public market's spotlight first. Harrison Rolfes, Senior Analyst at PitchBook, astutely analyzed this game: "The conventional interpretation is that Anthropic has just gained a narrative advantage by submitting first. The unconventional interpretation is that OpenAI actually got a better outcome: Anthropic voluntarily took on all the disclosure risks first, and now OpenAI can observe for free how institutional investors respond to audited financial data on cutting-edge AI, and then decide on its own pricing." This observation points out the core dilemma of AI company IPOs. The public market wants to see not only the "AI story," but also income quality, algorithm cost, cloud service sharing, cash consumption, customer structure, and profit margins. Whoever lifts the lid first will face the full scrutiny of the public market. Grok data shows that the market still generally expects OpenAI to complete its IPO in the fall of this year. The deep ties of Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS with the two model companies may also be fully disclosed in the IPO financials in the form of profit sharing and related transactions, which are the first dimensions that all types of buyer institutions inquire about in the secondary valuation of cutting-edge AI companies. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria further warns that the combined capital needs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic "will disrupt the capital markets," and going public early will be a "huge advantage" - but at the same time, "going first" also means being exposed to the price volatility risks brought about by the disruption earlier. Historical experience shows that in the same industry, the company that goes public first often enjoys more pricing space, while the later entrants are more likely to fall into a passive position of comparison. Kennedy believes that while SpaceX's business model is difficult to replicate, OpenAI and Anthropic are "too similar" - the two are unlikely to have significant differences in their market-sales ratios, which also means that the narrative advantage of going public first will eventually diminish marginally. Suspense: Who will be the first to define the trillion-dollar valuation template of the AI era? Anthropic's early secret submission marks a new phase in the global AI capital competition. From model competition to financing competition, and now to the current IPO first-mover narrative competition, everything is accelerating. However, the final outcome of the formal listing has not yet been revealed. While Anthropic submitted first, the authenticity of its listing time still depends on the SEC review process. On the other hand, although OpenAI has not submitted a file yet, the IPO preparation team is in place, with strong support from investment banking giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Beyond the battle of the giants, SpaceX, the "monster" with a valuation of $17.5 trillion, is also going public in the same window, and when the three trillion-dollar companies go public simultaneously, they will compete for the same positions of institutional investors - an unprecedented "capacity stress test" for the capital market. Beyond the grand picture of this capital battle, the more critical changes are brewing behind the scenes. Only after the two AI companies have completed their trading and announced quarterly financial figures, can the capital markets get reliable information on the true profit margins of advanced model companies. At that time, the pricing logic of the entire AI infrastructure investment and computing power industry chain may face reconstruction due to a financial report. Whether it is Anthropic or OpenAI who will write the rules for the capital market in the AI era - this is not just a matter of timing of the two companies going public, but it also concerns who will establish the valuation template for the entire AI race in the coming years.