Two Major AI Companies Are Getting Ready to Go Public

OpenAI submitted paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 8, 2026, signaling that it is preparing to offer shares to the public through an initial public offering, or IPO. The company announced this on its website. OpenAI said it has not yet set a date for moving forward, a standard statement that keeps its options open while following SEC procedures.

One week earlier, Anthropic, another major AI company, filed similar paperwork with the SEC, announced on June 1, 2026. Within eight days, two of the most important independent AI companies have both officially entered the queue for public offerings. This clustering of activity in the AI sector is new and significant.

What These Filings Actually Mean

When a company files confidential paperwork with the SEC, it is using rules created under a 2012 law meant to help newer companies. Think of it as a private draft conversation with the SEC: the company submits financial information and business plans for staff review without making those details public yet. The company negotiates questions with SEC officials, makes changes, and only releases the full filing publicly at least 15 days before it starts meeting with potential investors.

For OpenAI, this means nobody outside the SEC knows yet how much money the company makes, what it spends, how profitable it is, or what risks it faces. What the filing does confirm is that OpenAI has completed the basic work required to begin the IPO process: it has audited financial statements and a draft prospectus — essentially the document that will tell investors what they need to know.

It is worth noting that OpenAI filed paperwork with the SEC earlier, in March 2025, though the details of that filing were different from what we are seeing now. That earlier step suggests the company has been preparing for this process for over a year.

How Anthropic Fits In

Anthropic's filing from the week before gives us an immediate comparison. Both companies have unusual structures. Anthropic is set up as a public-benefit corporation — a legal form that balances profit with a public mission. OpenAI has been restructuring its ownership to become a more traditional public company. Neither follows the standard template that most technology companies do.

For OpenAI, the reshaping of how the company is organized has been essential groundwork for a public offering. When you sell shares to the public, you need a clear ownership structure and rights that match what institutional investors expect — the kind of standard setup that OpenAI's earlier private funding rounds did not have. The confidential filing suggests that OpenAI has resolved these structural questions enough to begin serious SEC review.

Anthropic will face similar questions, partly because of its public-benefit status. When you file for an IPO, you must explain to investors how a mission-driven structure affects the company's decisions and who its leaders answer to.

Why Now

The timing makes sense. Investment in AI infrastructure — the computers and data centers that power AI — has been pouring in at a pace rarely seen in technology. Major cloud companies like Microsoft and Google are spending billions on computer chips and facilities. Businesses are moving AI from testing to real-world use. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have profited from this shift through service fees, enterprise contracts, and subscriptions.

Going public gives these companies something private funding cannot fully provide: publicly traded stock that can be used to acquire other companies, pay and retain employees, and access money for operations. An IPO also gives the company more flexibility to raise cash for the expensive computing power that foundation models require to operate. The board of each company appears to believe that now is a good window to enter the public market while investor demand for AI companies remains high.

There is a historical pattern worth recognizing here. In the mid-1990s, when the internet was becoming commercially viable, a cluster of companies rushed to go public in a compressed timeframe. Netscape's 1995 IPO set the reference price for the entire sector, and competitors followed quickly. Not all of them survived when the market corrected. Today's AI companies are operating at a much larger scale with more proven revenue than those early internet firms, but the pattern of one landmark offering pulling competitors into the queue is familiar.

What We Still Don't Know

Because both filings are confidential, the most important details remain private. Nobody outside the SEC knows how much money OpenAI and Anthropic actually make, what percentage becomes profit, how much it costs to run their services, or which customers account for what share of their business. Investors and analysts right now are working from private funding rounds, public statements about how many people use the services, and guesses based on what the companies charge.

OpenAI's statement that it has not set a timeline is meaningful. Confidential filings do not stay that way forever. Market conditions, new regulations, or issues that come up during SEC review can all push back the date when a company goes public. Anthropic faces the same uncertainties. Neither has announced a roadshow schedule, chosen underwriters, or picked a stock exchange.

What the two filings do establish is that the major AI companies are preparing to move from private investors to public stock markets. That shift will bring new obligations: quarterly financial reports, analyst meetings, and public accounting that the market has never seen from companies operating at this scale.

When these companies eventually release their full financial details — probably sometime in the coming months — investors and the broader technology industry will have the first comprehensive, audited look at what it actually costs to build and run cutting-edge AI systems. That information will change how everyone thinks about the economics of AI, the competitive advantages that matter most, and how profitable these businesses can be over time.

The paperwork is filed. The process has begun.