OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic will reshape how investors access artificial intelligence

OpenAI’s planned $60 billion initial public offering would be more than double the size of Saudi Aramco’s record-setting 2019 listing and on its own would nearly match the total amount raised by all US IPOs at the height of the dot-com boom, Deutsche Bank’s Research Institute has noted in a rapid assessment of the ChatGPT maker’s plans.

The company is preparing to confidentially file a draft IPO prospectus as soon as this week, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley advising on what is expected to be a September debut that could value the business at more than $1 trillion.

OpenAI was valued at $852 billion after completing its latest funding round at the end of March and has raised more than $180 billion from private investors.

Deutsche Bank noted that a $60 billion raise would barely fall short of the $65 billion raised across all US IPOs in both 1999 and 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, and the $62 billion raised in 2020, and would represent half of the record-breaking $119 billion raised in 2021.

A trillion-dollar valuation would make OpenAI the 14th largest company in the world by market capitalisation, slotting in just behind Berkshire Hathaway, which generated revenues of more than $370 billion and net earnings of $67 billion last year, and just ahead of Eli Lilly, whose sales topped $65 billion with profit of $21 billion.

The contrast is stark: OpenAI has yet to make a profit and is expected to generate approximately $30 billion in annualised revenue this month.

Internal documents have projected a $14 billion loss for 2026 against roughly $18 billion in revenue, with projected cash burn estimated at approximately $27 billion for the current year and the company not expected to reach positive free cash flow until 2029 at the earliest.

The filing follows a federal jury ruling on Monday that threw out Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman, finding that Musk had waited too long to bring his claims that the pair violated an agreement to run the venture as a nonprofit.

Musk dismissed the verdict as a “calendar technicality” and has vowed to appeal, but the ruling removed what analysts had identified as the single biggest legal obstacle to a public offering.

Deutsche Bank observed that OpenAI has been laying the groundwork in recent months, streamlining its offering, focusing more on paying enterprise customers and clarifying its partnership with Microsoft, which owns approximately 27% of the company.

The filing also intensifies the race with Anthropic, which overtook OpenAI in revenue last month and is on track to generate $40 billion in annual recurring revenue this month.

Anthropic is targeting its own IPO as soon as October, with reports suggesting it too may seek to raise more than $60 billion, while simultaneously pursuing a private funding round at a valuation of $900 billion.

Both offerings will compete for capital alongside SpaceX, which is targeting a June 12 listing on the Nasdaq at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion, aiming to raise around $75 billion in what would itself be the largest IPO in history.

Deutsche Bank acknowledged concerns about the capacity of the market to absorb several hundred billion dollars of IPO issuance in a single year, but noted that the US stock market is now worth approximately $70 trillion, five times larger in nominal terms than at the peak of the dot-com bubble.

The number of IPOs has also declined significantly, from an average of almost 500 a year in the late 1990s to roughly 120 this decade, with companies typically now coming to market at a more mature stage.

Early signs suggest appetite remains robust: AI chipmaker Cerebras raised $6.4 billion last week in the largest IPO of 2026 so far, with its shares jumping by two-thirds on the first day of trading to give it a market value of roughly $67 billion.

For retail investors, a public OpenAI would offer direct exposure to a pure-play AI company for the first time, rather than relying on infrastructure proxies such as semiconductor makers or cloud providers.

Deutsche Bank noted that shares in the Magnificent Seven technology companies have quadrupled since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, with Nvidia, arguably the closest existing proxy for an AI pure-play investment, now commanding a market capitalisation of $5.4 trillion.