The questions at OpenAI’s investor meetings have taken a sharper edge in recent months. Some of the company’s largest backers have privately voiced concern about how quickly the startup is burning cash relative to its growth, according to people familiar with the matter. Others have quietly hedged their OpenAI exposure by putting money into Anthropic. The result, reported on August 1, is that OpenAI may delay its IPO to next year.
The company had wanted to beat Anthropic to the public market. Now it may wait, while its chief rival rushes in the opposite direction. Anthropic has accelerated plans for a fall IPO and has begun meeting potential investors, people familiar with the discussions said, pressing its advantages over the maker of ChatGPT.
The contrast between the two companies has widened on paper. Anthropic’s revenue growth has recently outpaced OpenAI’s, and so has its valuation, according to people familiar with the numbers. That reversal is the backdrop to a race that was once assumed to be a formality.
OpenAI’s cash burn is the crux. Training frontier models requires computing infrastructure that consumes billions of dollars a year, and the company’s spending has drawn private complaints even from investors who remain supportive. The concern is not whether OpenAI will survive, people familiar with the conversations said, but whether the economics will support a public listing at the valuation the company wants.
Hedging has become standard practice among the investors who back both firms. Putting money into Anthropic is the cheapest form of insurance against an OpenAI stumble, one investor said. The two labs now share much of the same shareholder base, which makes their race to the market more symmetrical than it first appears.
Anthropic’s pitch to investors leans on momentum. Its revenue is growing faster, its valuation has caught up, and its enterprise business has found a rhythm with companies that want an alternative to ChatGPT. The company has told potential investors it holds a lead over its rival in several measures, according to people familiar with the meetings.
OpenAI, for its part, retains the largest consumer brand in AI and the deepest developer ecosystem. Its models still anchor a large share of the industry’s usage. The question hanging over the listing is timing, not relevance, people close to the company said.
Delaying an IPO carries costs of its own. Employees holding equity wait longer for liquidity, and the private market’s appetite can shift. Going public into a skeptical reception would be worse, analysts said, and a delay buys time to show investors that spending is converging with revenue.
The fall window is now Anthropic’s to lose. If it prices well, it sets the benchmark against which OpenAI will eventually be measured. If it stumbles, the delay suddenly looks like the right call.
For the broader market, the race matters beyond the two companies. AI’s most prominent private names are testing whether public investors will pay for frontier research the way private ones have. The first listing to price will shape the template for everything that follows.
Neither company has confirmed dates. OpenAI has said nothing publicly about its timeline, and Anthropic’s meetings with investors have been conducted quietly. The signals point in opposite directions, which is itself the story.
The bankers and lawyers have not been idle either way. Mandates for the two listings have been the subject of quiet competition among the major banks, according to people familiar with the process. Both companies are being courted with the kind of attention reserved for the deals that define a career, and the competition says as much about the market as the companies do.
A delay also has consequences inside OpenAI. Employees who joined in the past year hold equity priced to a listing that keeps receding, and a slip into next year extends the wait for liquidity. OpenAI has run tender offers in the past to give employees a way to cash out, but a public listing remains the event that prices everyone’s stake, and a postponed one tests patience.
A year ago, the assumption in the market was that OpenAI would list first and set the tone. The assumption has flipped. Now the market watches Anthropic, and OpenAI waits for the calendar to cooperate.
The final shape of the race depends on numbers neither company publishes. Revenue growth, burn rate and valuation will be argued in private until the first prospectus appears. For now, the people closest to both companies describe the same scene: OpenAI buying time, Anthropic buying attention.
The irony is not lost on the investors who hold both. The company that burned cash fastest once talked about going public first; the company that grew faster may get there first. August’s reporting captured that reversal in a single paragraph, and the market has been reading it since.
The delay also raises questions about OpenAI’s private valuation. Each round in the private market is priced against the expectation of a public exit, and a postponed IPO pushes that exit further out. Investors who bought at the last mark will want to know what the next mark looks like, and the answer depends on numbers the company keeps to itself.
