OpenAI Files for IPO at Up to $1 Trillion as Anthropic and SpaceX Join the Queue

OpenAI confirmed on 8 June 2026 that it had confidentially filed for a US initial public offering, joining rival Anthropic in a move toward public capital markets that is shaping up as the most consequential technology listing cycle in more than two decades. The company has not disclosed the size or terms of the offering and said a timeline has not yet been determined, though sources cited by Reuters place a potential debut as early as September 2026 at a target valuation of up to $1 trillion. The filing follows Anthropic's own confidential submission on 1 June, weeks after the company raised $65 billion in a funding round that valued it at $965 billion. SpaceX, whose orbital AI data centre programme has attracted significant investor attention, is simultaneously pursuing an IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation. The three listings, if completed within months of each other, would represent the largest simultaneous concentration of technology capital formation in modern financial history. OpenAI's commercial profile at the time of filing is substantial. The company reported $2 billion in monthly revenue as of March 2026, growing at roughly four times the pace of Alphabet and Meta at comparable stages. ChatGPT surpassed 900 million weekly active users and 50 million consumer subscribers earlier this year. The company does not expect to reach profitability until 2030, a figure that reflects the scale of compute and research investment required to compete at the frontier of AI development. The corporate structure question has been resolved. OpenAI completed its transition to a public benefit corporation in 2024, removing the capped-profit constraint that had previously complicated any path to conventional equity markets. A US jury ruling in May 2026 found OpenAI not liable in litigation brought by Elon Musk alleging the company had strayed from its original nonprofit mission, clearing the final legal overhang ahead of the IPO process. For Gulf enterprises and sovereign investors, the stakes are direct. Abu Dhabi's MGX, the state-backed AI investment vehicle aligned with Mubadala and G42, holds a stake in OpenAI and has committed capital broadly across the AI infrastructure ecosystem these companies represent. Gulf sovereign wealth funds have built meaningful exposure across the AI capital stack over the past two years, and the public market reception of these offerings will determine how that exposure is valued and how much additional capital flows into the sector. The AI IPO wave also carries structural implications for enterprise technology buyers across the region. Anthropic, whose Claude model family is in active enterprise deployment including for institutions monitoring advanced AI-driven security vulnerabilities in GCC banking, will become a publicly traded company with quarterly reporting obligations. OpenAI's IPO subjects ChatGPT's enterprise revenue trajectory to the same investor scrutiny. That transparency will be material for procurement teams evaluating long-term platform commitments. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC that the company remains on a 2028 IPO timeline regardless of how the current listings perform. Databricks was separately reported to be in discussions for a funding round valuing it at between $165 billion and $175 billion, a further sign that enterprise AI infrastructure capital continues to concentrate at scale. As the AI platforms reshaping enterprise AI adoption across MENA move onto public markets, the organisations deploying them will gain more visibility, not less, into where those platforms are headed commercially, financially, and strategically.