OpenAI takes the lead in AI IPO horse race: ‘Getting to public markets first is very important’

Reports that OpenAI is set to confidentially file for an IPO as soon as Friday changed prediction market traders’ outlook on which private AI giant will debut on the public markets first.  

Traders on Kalshi now see OpenAI as the favorite to go public before Anthropic, giving it an 83% chance of getting the big payday first. 

“Getting to public markets first is very important, given this arms race going on,” said Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities’ global head of technology research. “It sets a valuation, you’re the first one to meet with investors on the road, and there’s an advantage.”

Before the initial report on the IPO timeline by the Wall Street Journal which CNBC later confirmed, traders gave OpenAI just over a 32% chance of beating its chief private rival to the public markets.

Chances Anthropic would beat OpenAI to an IPO collapsed on Polymarket to 20% from 69%. 

While the birth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched the AI bull market in November 2022, the company has lost some of its shine with investors. 

Worries about the company’s spending, reports on missed revenue and growth targets and leadership turnover weighed on investors’ outlooks. There have even been internal disagreements on the timeline to go public, according to the Journal, with CEO Sam Altman pushing for a faster debut than CFO Sarah Friar. 

At the same time, Anthropic’s enterprise business has led it to experience massive growth in recent months, and reportedly is in talks with investors for a new funding round that would value the company at $900 billion, greater than that of OpenAI’s latest valuation.

Investors became enchanted with Anthropic’s Claude models, which have been constantly updated with new versions. Those updates were followed so closely by investors that they consistently moved the stock market in the beginning of the year, as worries about how new tools from Claude models would disrupt existing businesses mounted.

It was in late March when reports about an extremely powerful new model, Claude Mythos, circulated that Anthropic took a consistent lead over OpenAI on Kalshi of who would have a public debut first. Bloomberg reported around the same time that the company was looking to IPO as soon as October. 

But with an IPO on the way — sooner than prediction market traders thought — and a court win against Elon Musk this week, it could be the moment for a turnaround, according to Ives.

“It started with the lawsuit,” he said. “And now filing the IPO, that’s a great one-two punch to start to put water on the negative fire that’s been on them.”

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a CNBC minority investment.