OpenAI files a week after Anthropic, and nobody can agree what it's worth

Right on cue, eight days after Anthropic, OpenAI announced on X that it submitted a confidential S-1. Same playbook, same secrecy, same week. The two biggest names in AI are now racing each other to a listing — and the choreography is hard to miss.

Reported targets run from ~$730B to ~$850B, and some outlets push toward ~$1 trillion. That's a quarter-trillion-dollar spread on a single company. The reason is simple: the filing is confidential, so reporters are triangulating from sources, and the numbers wander accordingly. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the reported underwriters (with JPMorgan in the mix) — the banks that get paid more the bigger the number prints.

Bloomberg pegs the broader AI-IPO pipeline at around $3.6 trillion. In a wave that big, you don't want to be the laggard listing into exhausted demand. So both labs file early, set the story, and keep their options open while saying the timing is 'undecided' (OpenAI's word). Translation: they'll go when the market looks hungriest — and not a day before.