What's New Since Our Last Report

When we covered Anthropic's confidential S-1 submission, the story was the filing itself. Now we have more: Anthropic is expected to publicly confirm the move on Monday, June 2, the valuation gap between Anthropic and OpenAI is sharper than ever, and Sam Altman just went on television to react.

The $965 Billion Question

Anthropic's latest funding round — closed just a week before the SEC filing — valued the company at $965 billion, according to NPR. A five-year-old company, founded in 2021, is being valued at nearly a trillion dollars.

For context: OpenAI's most recent private valuation was $852 billion as of March, according to NPR. Anthropic just leapfrogged them — on paper.

Both numbers are based entirely on private investor assumptions about future growth. Neither company has been tested by public markets. That test is coming.

Altman's CNBC Moment

The morning of Anthropic's announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on CNBC. His message: yes, OpenAI plans to go public — but "we'll do it when it makes sense," according to BBC News.

When your rival files for an IPO and you respond with "no rush," you're either genuinely unconcerned or you're buying time. The financial world will decide which. Wedbush Securities analysts, cited by NPR, called this "an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market" and named Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX as three companies set to go public later this year.

Three mega-listings. One race.

What's Driving Anthropic's Valuation

The New York Times points to one specific engine behind Anthropic's explosive growth: AI that automatically writes computer code. This isn't chatbot hype — enterprise customers are paying serious money for coding automation, and Anthropic's Claude models are capturing that market. Coding automation is generating real revenue that justifies the valuation.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Missing

BBC and NPR both framed this primarily as an IPO-market story — will investors show up? But the harder question remains: are these valuations real?

$965 billion for a company that's five years old, in an industry that didn't exist commercially a decade ago, in a regulatory environment that's still being written. Private investors poured money in based on growth projections. Public investors will look at actual revenue, actual margins, actual earnings. Those numbers haven't been disclosed yet.

The S-1 is confidential. We know the valuation because Anthropic told us. We do not know whether the business actually supports it yet.

The SpaceX Factor

SpaceX filed financial information for a potential IPO in late May, according to NPR. That's Elon Musk's rocket and aerospace company entering the same queue.

Three near-trillion-dollar companies potentially going public in the same year. The IPO market has been, as Wedbush put it, "relatively dormant for a few years." This would be the opposite of dormant.

The risk: if one of these listings stumbles — if the public market says "no thanks" to a $965 billion price tag — it could cool the entire AI investment wave. Conversely, if Anthropic prices well and trades up, it validates every AI unicorn valuation on the planet.

For Investors

If you're a retail investor, here's what matters.

First: you cannot buy shares yet. The price and share count are not set, per Anthropic's own announcement.

Second: when the S-1 goes public — meaning when Anthropic releases the full prospectus — read the revenue line. Not the valuation. The revenue.

Third: Wedbush's optimism comes from an investment bank. Investment banks get paid when IPOs happen. Their incentive is not the same as yours.

The Stakes

Anthropic's filing is old news. What's new is the anticipated public confirmation, the near-trillion-dollar valuation now officially on the table, and Sam Altman doing TV interviews to address it.

Public markets are the truth machine. Private valuations are assumptions. When these companies go public, one of them will be right.