Summer of Blockbuster IPOs

This is shaping up to be the summer of blockbuster IPOs.

SpaceX is reportedly preparing for what could become one of the largest public offerings ever. Anthropic has now filed confidential IPO paperwork. OpenAI is also reportedly working with bankers on its own potential listing. What makes this interesting is that the race is not just about who builds the best AI model. It is also about who reaches the public markets first.

In a hot IPO market, timing matters. The first major company to go public often gets the most attention, the most excitement, and the easiest access to capital. Later companies may still be strong businesses, but they are judged against whoever came first. That dynamic matters even more when the pipeline is crowded. If SpaceX goes public at a massive valuation, it could absorb a huge amount of investor attention and capital. Anthropic and OpenAI may then be competing not only with each other, but also with every other major company trying to take advantage of the same market window.

For Anthropic, filing first could be a real advantage. The company is positioning itself to be one of the first major frontier AI labs available to public market investors. OpenAI may have the more famous brand, but Anthropic has built a reputation for being more focused, safety-oriented, and disciplined.

As an investor, I find this fascinating because the AI boom has mostly been expressed through companies like Nvidia, TSMC, and the hyperscalers. If Anthropic or OpenAI go public, investors may finally get direct exposure to the companies building the frontier models themselves.

The biggest question is whether public investors will be willing to pay enormous valuations for companies that still require huge amounts of spending on chips, data centers, and talent. AI may be one of the most important technologies of our lifetime, but that does not automatically make every AI company a great investment at any price.

Still, Anthropic's filing feels like a major moment. The AI race is moving from private funding rounds into the public markets. And once that happens, investors will not just be debating which company has the best model. They will be debating which company has the best business model.