Nathaniel Whittemore

Now, for market commentators, the specific date is less of a question than whether Anthropic gets out ahead of OpenAI or whether Altman can go public first.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that OpenAI's filing was expected within days, but that was two weeks ago and we haven't heard anything since.

During an interview on Monday, Sam Altman didn't seem to be in any particular rush.

Asked if there was a race to go public, he responded,

I don't think, no, not for that.

I think there is a race to deliver the best technology and build the best business.

Going public is a financing event, and I don't think that's one we're focused on the timing of.

We'll do it when we think it makes sense.

Now, that has not stopped the financial press from painting this as a high-stakes race between the two companies.

Senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital Matthew Kennedy said, "...the bankers are telling them that the time is right, whoever goes first will be able to set the tone, and whoever goes second could look like an also-ran and be ultimately forced to compare itself with the other one in the marketing discussions."

Others had a different view, however, with Harrison Rolfs of PitchBook commenting, For OpenAI, the conventional read is that Anthropic just seized the narrative advantage by filing first.

The unconventional read is that OpenAI got the better end of this.

Anthropic just volunteered to absorb all the disclosure risk first, and OpenAI now has a free option to watch how institutional investors react to audited frontier AI financials before committing to its own price.

Look, I've said this before and I will continue to beat this drum.

I think that the IPO raceness of all of this is largely for the sake of financial headline writers in pretty much the same way that I think that every token that either of these companies makes available is going to be bought for the foreseeable future.

I also think that every stock share that either of these companies gives people access to will be bought in just a short order.

And while there may be nominal narrative advantages or disadvantages to going first or second, I do not think that the market is going to pick a winner here.

I think both of these companies are going to see just absolutely staggering demand.

Dan Ives of Wedbush, by the way, had a similar take, writing in his Monday note, We believe this represents an opening of the floodgate for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years.

Now also in the AI markets, Google has announced plans to raise $80 billion in equity to fund their continued AI build-out.