Two trillion dollar IPOs will reshape the AI boom, says leading investment bank
The expected stock market debuts of OpenAI and Anthropic will permanently alter the artificial intelligence boom, according to Deutsche Bank, by forcing transparency, funding and accountability on an industry that has so far operated largely in private.
Both companies filed confidentially for initial public offerings in early June, with each share sale reportedly aiming to raise around $60 billion and value the company above $1 trillion.
The bank frames the wave as a turning point, with the caveat that news last week of OpenAI weighing a delay to its own listing shows how much is at stake.
The most immediate change is transparency.
Preparing to list will require public-company-grade reporting, credible metrics and disclosures on the growing pile of lawsuits over copyright, safety and governance.
That, the bank argues, would finally give investors a pure-play benchmark to judge whether frontier model makers are winner-takes-all franchises like Amazon or interchangeable commodities.
The financial contrast between the two is stark.
Anthropic’s revenue run rate reached $47 billion in late May, up from $1 billion at the end of 2024, overtaking OpenAI, which is generating an estimated $25 billion to $33 billion.
Public money would also break the reliance on piecemeal private financing.
Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May, while OpenAI raised $122 billion at $852 billion in March, both anchored by complex compute commitments to their hyperscaler backers.
Listings would additionally hand the companies liquid stock as ammunition in the war for talent, and a currency for acquisitions at a time when private-equity firms are sitting on a record backlog of unsold assets.
The third theme is accountability, and here the bank is blunt about the risks.
AI has lost some of its shine, and pure-play listings could turn these companies into lightning rods for public anxiety over jobs, trust and, above all, data centres.
Opposition to the sprawling facilities has become a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the US, with a Gallup poll finding 71% of Americans would oppose one being built nearby.
The bank notes Anthropic’s recent brushes with Washington, including the Pentagon supply-chain designation and the export controls that briefly forced it to switch off its most powerful models, as a preview of the political scrutiny listed status invites.
On valuation, the report strikes a cautiously constructive note.
It concedes the market looks expensive, with the cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 nearing its dot-com peak.
But it argues today’s IPO candidates are far more mature and more profitable than the class of 1999, when only 6% of tech debutants made money.
The bank closes on a note of humility, invoking Amazon, dismissed by a fund manager on its 1997 float, as a reminder that picking the winner matters more than timing the boom.
