In what can only be described as the most expensive game of copycat ever played, OpenAI filed its IPO paperwork exactly one week after Anthropic did the same. Because nothing says “we have a sustainable business model” like watching your rival’s lawyer send a filing and immediately calling your own.
The timing is exquisite. Anthropic goes public on Monday. OpenAI’s lawyers are apparently still reading the press release on Tuesday, coffee in hand, before someone yells “MOVE IT” and they sprint to the SEC office like they’re late for a flight.
Here’s the beautiful part: both companies are essentially pitching the same product to the same investors using the same PowerPoint deck structure. It is a competition to see who can convince Wall Street that their particular flavor of “we trained a language model on the internet and now we’re worth billions” deserves the premium valuation. The real winner will be whoever delivers the cringe-factor that makes investors feel like they are funding something that matters—not just a very expensive autocomplete that hallucinates less on Tuesdays.
The IPO race has now become a spectacle of mutual desperation dressed up as confidence. Both companies need public capital. Both need it fast. And both are banking on the fact that 2026 is apparently the year we all agreed that AI is the answer to everything, even questions nobody asked.
For regular investors watching this unfold: this is what a market bubble doing laps looks like. Exciting? Sure. A sign to throw your savings at it? That is between you and your therapist.