Will OpenAI or Anthropic IPO first?

The core facts point toward Anthropic having the better chance to list first. It filed its confidential draft S-1 about a week before OpenAI, and the recent reporting suggests Anthropic is moving while OpenAI is still undecided on timing and may prefer to wait until 2027 or until valuation and restructuring issues are cleaner. In an IPO race, a modest head start matters when one company is signaling flexibility and the other is drifting later.

OpenAI is the bigger and more visible company, which is probably why the market is heavily leaning toward it as the first public entrant. But size is not the same as speed. If OpenAI is optimizing for a higher valuation, corporate restructuring, and more favorable market conditions, that can easily translate into delay, while Anthropic can simply continue through the filing process and seize the earlier window.

Compared with the current 0.86 price on Yes, I think the market is overconfident in OpenAI-first. The most plausible explanation is that traders are anchoring on OpenAI’s brand and scale rather than the reported sequencing and timing signals. On the evidence available now, the fair price looks much closer to a coin-flip plus Anthropic advantage than to an 86% OpenAI-first outcome.