OpenAI joins IPO parade

OpenAI said it filed confidentially for an IPO in a fast follow to Anthropic's filing.

In a statement, OpenAI said:

"We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. 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."

A few thoughts:

• The timing of this confidential filing is comical. First, OpenAI announced that confidential S-1 a few hours after Apple's WWDC keynote featured Google Gemini as supporting LLM.
• OpenAI's filing is keeping options open and giving Anthropic's potential IPO investors something to think about. See: My internal monologue reading Anthropic's big idea posts | Anthropic confidentially files for IPO
• The race between OpenAI and Anthropic to the public markets is about one reality: There's only so much capital to go around. Both AI giants are going to push $1 trillion or more in valuation initially and this week SpaceX goes public. See: SpaceX's IPO: Do you believe in space data centers, xAI's potential?