OpenAI cut its valuation, but Anthropic may go public next month. Could AI company IPOs revive the collapsed AI stocks?

Why one IPO becomes a test for the whole market

The root of the recent decline in AI stocks is doubt over "who will pay for AI spending." AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are the largest customers of Microsoft, Google and Amazon's clouds, and these cloud companies are the largest customers of Nvidia and memory makers. If the labs can't raise money, the whole chain wobbles.

That is why the Anthropic IPO is not a simple IPO event. It is a test of whether public markets can absorb AI funding on the scale of tens of billions of dollars. A bull appearing on CNBC said that if an Anthropic IPO and OpenAI's fundraising both go through, funding concerns would vanish and the AI trade would come back (report's YouTube section).

Facts confirmed so far

• Anthropic confidentially filed IPO documents (a draft S-1) with the SEC on June 1, 2026 (Yahoo Finance, 2026-06)
• It raised $65 billion in its Series H in May at a valuation of $965 billion (Implicator, 2026-06)
• An October Nasdaq listing and a mid-October roadshow were initially floated (citing Bloomberg reports, StartupHub 2026-07), but later reports say it has slipped to November. This is not officially confirmed
• Pre-IPO over-the-counter prediction markets have at times valued it at over $2 trillion (Euronews, 2026-09-17)
• Under US rules, confidential filings must be made public at least 15 days before the roadshow begins. Based on searches, no public S-1 had been found as of late October

The last item matters most in practice. To list in November, a public filing would need to appear by early November at the latest. Whether a public S-1 is filed is the first signal.

Three scenarios

The third scenario should not be taken lightly. Reports say SpaceX listed this year at an IPO price of $135, rose above $225 and then fell back to about $153 (FourWeekMBA, 2026-10). In Korea, AI company Elice, whose IPO subscription was heavily oversubscribed, fell 32% on its first day of trading (10/20). In 2012, Facebook listed at $38 and its shares fell by nearly half within four months. When a large tech IPO carries the full weight of market expectations, the period after day one has been the more dangerous one.

Signals from OpenAI are mixed

OpenAI lowered the target valuation for its roughly $30 billion raise from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion (report). Reports said advisers told it to delay an IPO until 2027 if it wants more than $1 trillion, or to lower its valuation if it wants to list quickly (Morningstar, NYT cited by FourWeekMBA, 2026-10). That means price expectations in private markets are coming down.

This cuts both ways for Anthropic. Reports that Anthropic ($965 billion) overtook OpenAI ($852 billion) in their latest private valuations give it a relative edge. But the $2 trillion expectation in OTC markets was formed during the September AI rally. With semiconductor ETFs down 17% from their highs since then, the IPO price may be set lower than expected, and the market may read that as a 'discounted IPO.'

So what should investors do

• Don't use the IPO timeline as a reason to buy. Until a public S-1 is out, IPO expectations are just reports. Once filed, revenue growth and cash burn will become the first official data on the AI lab business model
• If you are targeting the IPO directly, avoid chasing on day one. As with SpaceX and Facebook, pullbacks after day one have often been large. Around the first quarterly earnings release was a better entry window
• Existing AI stockholders should watch credit indicators before IPO success. Whether CoreWeave bond yields come down is more direct evidence of easing funding concerns. Even if the IPO succeeds, a rebound is unlikely to last if these yields stay put
• Position adjustment: The ones hurt most in a postponement scenario are neoclouds building data centers with debt. If you are heavily weighted in these, it is safer to trim some before confirming whether a public filing appears in early November