Everyone has their very own biases, and I would as well reveal mine: I would like startups to go public.
This is what reporters like to see. Finally, a likelihood to look under the hood of the busiest unicorns and see their revenues, growth rates and largest shareholder interests. And while most of those corporations lose money, filing for an IPO permits you to gain insight into gross margins and determine when the company can reach profitability.
All of this implies it’s all about the possibility of an IPO – as has been teased Anthropic In Financial Times. article late Tuesday — an exciting development for those of us who have lamented the dearth of unicorn IPOs in recent months.
Of course, no company goes public simply to satisfy the curiosity of that tiny fraction of the population that lives for S-1 filings. The major reasons are much more pragmatic: to boost money, reap the benefits of the higher profile and potential valuation boost that a stock market listing provides, and provide a path to liquidity for founders, employees and early investors.
The draw is so large that the best-known private corporations should prepare for a public listing, even if it ends with a delay or withdrawal. In a similar vein, Reuters reported a few weeks ago OpenAI lays the foundations for a potential IPO of its own.
The valuations are huge
The valuations that generative AI giants are searching for would sound incredible if they weren’t underpinned by each private markets and the ever-rising shares of already public AI giants.
OpenAI is reportedly eyeing an initial public valuation of as much as $1 trillion – twice the size of its last reported private valuation 500 billion dollars last month during a secondary share sale. The application is reportedly expected to be publicly submitted in the second half of 2026.
Anthropic is currently said to be searching for latest financing at a private valuation of over $300 billion. So it could likely aim for an even higher market capitalization in an IPO, although it is not yet clear how high.
I is not going to comment on what valuations seem reasonable for these iconic and still deeply unprofitable corporations. For context, nonetheless, it’s price noting that no U.S. venture-backed company that has ever gone public has achieved initial valuations even close to those levels.
Metawhich was made public Nasdaq like Facebook in 2012, it still holds the record based on Crunchbase data. It went public at an initial valuation of $104 billion, just over a tenth of what OpenAI is reportedly searching for.
Next on this list is Coinbaseto $86 billion and then Uber at $82.4 billion. Only six VC-backed corporations debuted with $40 billion or more, based on Crunchbase, listed below.
Importantly, these numbers reflect the valuations at which corporations valued the shares, not their value on the first day of trading. When Figma for example, it went public this summer, and its shares greater than tripled in first-day trading, bringing it to well over $40 billion, though its price was lower.
Could 2026 finally be the 12 months of the IPO?
If public investors are ready and willing to purchase OpenAI at its rumored valuation, it could appear to be an effort price making for the company. The same goes for Anthropic, especially if it manages to be first to market, thus reducing some of the highlight continuously being thrown at its rival.
Since the 2020-2022 startup IPO boom ended, market observers have been continuously attempting to predict when the next one will occur. Hopes that 2025 will be that 12 months are now fading. While we have seen some large, well-received startup IPOs, activity has remained sparse.
Maybe 2026 will be that 12 months. With record-breaking deals from GenAI’s biggest brands, it definitely doesn’t hurt to show up the volume.