In the latest move in the AI arms race, OpenAI filed to go public on June 8 — one week after Anthropic submitted its paperwork for a public listing. 

Despite only breaking through national and international consciousness in November 2023, gen AI – including OpenAI and Anthropic solutions – have been deeply embedded in the operations of most major financial services companies.

According to Nvidia‘s State of AI in Financial Services: 2026 Trends report, 61% of financial institutions are using or assessing generative AI, a 52% increase year over year. 

Some 73% of executives said AI is crucial to their success and nearly 100% said their AI budgets will stay the same or increase in the next year. 

JPMorgan, for example, is spending nearly $2 billion on AI initiatives this year and expects to increase its AI spend in the coming years to make operations more efficient, according to FinAi News’ reporting.  

Financial institutions that tap OpenAI and Anthropic include: 

• Fintech F2, which announced in April it was an early adopter of GPT-5.5;  

• Customers Bank, which is expanding lending, payments and deposit operations with OpenAI; and 

• JPMorgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, which all use Anthropic. 

Major IPO 

Anthropic and OpenAI will be among the highest-valued IPOs ever, Matt Sekerke, macro economist at John Hopkins University and managing director at consultancy SEDA Experts, told FinAi News.  

The biggest IPO in the history of the U.S. public markets is Alibaba, which entered the markets at a valuation of $169 billion in 2014, according to Nasdaq.

“The amounts of cash they need to keep running are getting beyond what the venture capital community can support,” he said. “So, the natural next step is to go to the public markets and try to raise funds through that.”  

The valuations the companies are seeking have not been publicly disclosed. 

The current top three largest IPOs by valuation are: 

• Saudi Aramco, which was valued at about $1.7 trillion in 2019; 

• Alibaba, which was valued at about $169.4 billion in 2014, making it the largest IPO in U.S. history; and 

• Meta (Facebook), which was valued at about $81.3 billion in 2012. 

IPO concern 

The two companies rushing for IPOs are creating concern is the marketplace as the event is being seen as an exit liquidity event, Sekerke said.  

“I’m worried that in this rush to raise these huge amounts of money within this closing window [of a potential economic downturn], those other aspects of going public are getting pushed aside,” he said. 

While some economists are sounding alarms around valuation and lack of profitability concerns, other industry leaders are more upbeat about the public offering. 

“I think that intelligence is foundational and we will come to see this just as we see water or power,” Tomás Campos, chief executive of AI credit data and analytics company Spinwheel, told FinAi News.  

“It actually shows that there’s a very, very strong appetite for this and I’m really excited about it.” 

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