The coming AI IPO wave: OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek
The next major chapter in the AI revolution may not be about new models or technological breakthroughs, but about the public markets. OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek are moving toward potential IPOs, creating what could become some of the most closely watched listings in recent history.
While no official timelines have been confirmed, the expectation is that Anthropic will go public in late 2026, while OpenAI may wait until 2027. DeepSeek's timeline remains less clear, but a listing in 2027 appears increasingly likely as China's AI sector continues to mature. While each company has a different strategy and market position, together they represent a broader transition of AI from a venture-funded innovation story to an investment theme that involves publicly traded companies. As AI companies enter the public markets, investors will likely place greater emphasis on profitability, capital efficiency, and the long-term economic viability of AI.
Three companies, three ambitions
OpenAI is probably the most recognizable AI company in the world. Through ChatGPT, it has built a massive global user base and established itself as the public face of generative AI. The company is pursuing a broad strategy that includes consumer subscriptions, enterprise software, AI agents and, increasingly, commerce and advertising. To expand its capabilities, OpenAI continues to invest heavily in computing capacity and AI infrastructure. An IPO would give public investors direct access to one of the most influential companies in the AI sector, while providing OpenAI with the capital needed to sustain its growth ambitions.
Anthropic has taken a different path. While it competes at the frontier of AI development, it has built its reputation around corporate customers, software developers and reliability. Its chatbot Claude has become one of the preferred AI tools for business applications and coding purposes. Anthropic is increasingly being viewed as an AI player with a strong focus on corporate value creation, enabling companies to reduce costs and improve profitability through its AI solutions.
DeepSeek represents a third model. The Chinese AI company attracted global attention by demonstrating that highly capable AI models can be developed at significantly lower costs than many investors previously assumed. DeepSeek represents an alternative vision of AI development, that prioritizes efficiency over scale. A future IPO would give investors exposure to the Chinese side of the global AI race.
What these companies have in common
Despite their differences, all three companies operate at the frontier of AI. Although DeepSeek may be an outlier to some extent, they all face the same fundamental challenge: AI requires extraordinary amounts of capital. Training models, securing computing power and attracting top talent demand investments on a scale rarely seen in the software industry. Against this backdrop, the expected IPOs of these AI companies make sense, as public markets offer far greater access to capital than private funding alone.
Another common characteristic is that investors will primarily be buying future potential rather than established profitability. Revenue growth across the AI sector has been remarkable, but investors increasingly want proof that these businesses can eventually generate sustainable profits. As AI becomes more widely available, the long-term winners may not simply be those with the most advanced technology, but those that can build durable platforms, achieve recurring revenue streams and find effective ways to monetize their models.
All three companies are also helping drive a broader wave of AI-related investments. Whether through cloud infrastructure, enterprise adoption or datacentres, their growth continues to stimulate demand for AI-related products and services across the wider technology sector. The eventual IPOs will therefore be about much more than the companies themselves. They will serve as an important test of how investors value the entire AI sector.
Potential impact on markets and sentiment
The impact of these IPOs could extend far beyond the companies themselves. A successful listing by one of these firms would reinforce the idea that AI is becoming a long-term investment category rather than a hype. It could attract fresh capital into technology, revive broader IPO activity and strengthen investor confidence in related sectors such as semiconductors, cloud computing, data centres and digital infrastructure.
Timing may also play a crucial role. Anthropic is widely viewed as one frontier AI companies most likely to go public first, potentially providing investors with the first detailed look at the economics of a leading AI lab. OpenAI appears to have more flexibility due to its access to private capital and may prefer to wait until market conditions support a valuation closer to its long-term ambitions. DeepSeek's path is more uncertain and will likely depend on Chinese regulatory conditions, investor appetite and domestic capital market developments.
Once these companies do go public, investors will be looking closely at their revenue growth, infrastructure spending, profitability trends and capital efficiency. Anthropic's expected public disclosures, in particular, could become an important benchmark for how the market values frontier AI companies. Likewise, OpenAI's eventual listing may reveal whether investors are willing to support extremely high valuations in exchange for future growth potential.
If these companies continue to enjoy strong growth, enthusiasm for AI investments could accelerate further. On the contrary, if infrastructure costs continue to absorb most of the financial benefits, investors may become more cautious. (Currently, much of these companies’ free cash flow is used to invest in AI infrastructure, although this situation is expected to improve after 2028.) Other developments investors will keep a close eye on are the pricing and usage of ‘tokens’ (a token is a unit of text that an AI language model reads or generates) and the competition from lower cost open-source AI models.
The market’s reaction to the first major AI IPO could therefore influence the valuations, timing and reception of those that follow. Ultimately, long-term winners will likely be those with the strongest ‘ecosystems’ (an AI company’s entire platform including its hardware, software and infrastructure such as data centres) and most durable revenue streams.
Conclusion
OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepSeek are not simply preparing for their IPOs. They are also helping define how equity markets will value AI. While all three require substantial capital to fuel growth, they represent very different visions of AI's future: a global consumer platform, a premium provider of corporate AI solutions, and an efficiency-driven challenger from China.
Their eventual market debuts will be more than financing events. They will serve as a crucial test of investor confidence in the long-term economics of AI and could shape market sentiment, valuations and capital flows across the entire AI sector for years to come. The first successful frontier AI IPO may ultimately become the moment when AI evolves from a technology trend into a fully established asset class for (public) equity investors.
Joost Olde Riekerink
Equity Research & Advisory Expert