Three of the most valuable private companies on the planet are lining up to sell shares to the public within months of each other. The timing traces back to how far their spending has outrun their sales. SpaceX, which absorbed Elon Musk’s AI venture xAI, went public first, and OpenAI and Anthropic have both filed paperwork to follow.
OpenAI alone has committed about $1.4 trillion to data centers and computing power over eight years, a figure its chief executive, Sam Altman, shared in November 2025. The money buys buildings, chips and electricity years before the spending pays for itself. Sales are far behind, with the company’s revenue running at more than $40 billion a year, PYMNTS reported. Anthropic said in May 2026 that its revenue was running above $47 billion a year. Together, the two companies’ yearly revenue comes to less than a tenth of that commitment.
Private investors covered most of the difference. Venture firms, private equity firms and big technology companies traded cash for ownership stakes, as when Amazon put $50 billion into OpenAI for roughly a 5% stake. A stake in a private company is hard to sell until a public listing turns it into shares that trade freely and convert to cash.
At listing, OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion. Anthropic aims to list on Nasdaq as soon as September or October 2026, and its backers expect close to $2 trillion. That would make it the largest stock listing in history.
Nobody has to choose to buy AI stock to end up owning it. In May 2026, Nasdaq changed its rules in a move built around SpaceX’s debut. Large new listings now join its main stock index after 15 days of trading, instead of three months. When SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 in July, funds tracking that index had to buy about $4.3 billion of its stock. That pulled in every 401(k) and retirement account built on such a fund. Reporting on the rule change noted that OpenAI and Anthropic are both structured to qualify for the same fast entry.
Index funds buy whatever the index holds, without judging whether a trillion dollars of spending has been matched by a trillion dollars of demand.
