Startups

OpenAI files confidential S-1, kicking off a dual-AI-lab race to the public markets

ChatGPT's maker submitted draft IPO paperwork a week after Anthropic, setting up a fall 2026 listing window with combined private-market valuations near $2 trillion.

By Giulia Donatello · Startups & funding · 2026-06-09 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Aditya Vyas — Exterior of the New York Stock Exchange building with American flags

OpenAI submitted a draft S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, 2026, and announced the confidential filing the next morning, roughly a week after Anthropic took the same step. The two labs are now on parallel glide paths toward a fall 2026 listing window, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading OpenAI’s underwriting, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reuters reports OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion in a debut that could come as early as September.

The combined private-market sticker is already there. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in March and around $880 billion on secondary markets in April. Anthropic’s most recent round priced it above $965 billion, and on Forge Global it has briefly traded at a $1 trillion mark. Together, that’s nearly $2 trillion of paper value walking toward the SEC at the same time.

The momentum gap is the interesting part. Anthropic is up 123% year-to-date on secondary markets; OpenAI, 11.3%. Anthropic has also told investors it’s close to its first quarterly profit. OpenAI, by contrast, recently missed its own internal targets for new users and revenue, per the Journal, and CFO Sarah Friar has reportedly voiced concerns about whether the company can sustain its data-center spending. ChatGPT still claims more than 900 million weekly active users, and a CNBC-reported tender offer would let employees cash out before any listing.

OpenAI’s filing statement carries its own tell: the company says it’s “not decided on timing yet,” and concedes some plans are “likely easier as a private company.” That’s narrative management for the S-1 quiet period, but it’s also honest. The late-March $122 billion round, billed as the largest in Silicon Valley history and including $3 billion routed directly from retail investors via bank channels, already pulled the public into a company that wasn’t yet public.

David Shapiro of OpenVC tracks the secondary tape. SpaceX is expected to beat both labs to the bell. What follows is the first true test of whether AI enthusiasm survives contact with quarterly reporting, a transition the 2017 ICO cohort never had to face and the 1999 dot-com class failed.

Sources