‘Getting to public markets first is very important’

Reports that OpenAI will confidentially file for an IPO on Friday have shifted prediction market traders’ perspective that the private AI giant will hit the public markets first.

Investors at Kalshi now see OpenAI as the favorite to go public before Anthropic, giving it an 83% chance of getting the big payday first.

“Given that the arms race continues, it’s crucial to reach the public markets first,” said Dan Ives, head of global technology research at Wedbush Securities. “This sets a valuation, you are the first to meet investors down the road, and that provides an advantage.”

Ahead of first report on IPO timeline Wall Street Magazine As CNBC later confirmed, traders gave OpenAI just over a 32% chance of beating its chief private rival in the public markets.

Anthropic has a chance to beat OpenAI if the IPO on Polymarket drops from 69% to 20%.

While the birth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ushered in the AI ​​bull market in November 2022, the company has lost some of its luster with investors.

Concerns about the company’s spending, reports of missed revenue and growth targets, and leadership change have weighed on investors’ outlooks. There were even internal disagreements over the timeline for going public. MagazineCEO Sam Altman is pushing for a faster start-up than CFO Sarah Friar.

At the same time, Anthropic’s enterprise business has seen massive growth in recent months, and it is reportedly in talks with investors for a new round of funding that would value the company at $900 billion, a higher valuation than OpenAI’s last valuation.

Investors were fascinated by Anthropic’s Claude models, which are constantly updated with new versions. These updates were followed so closely by investors that they steadily moved the stock market at the beginning of the year as concerns grew about how Claude models’ new vehicles could disrupt existing businesses.

In late March, reports on an extremely powerful new model, Claude Mythos, had revealed that Anthropic had gained a consistent lead over OpenAI in Kalshi, which was set to make its public debut. Around the same time, Bloomberg reported that the company was planning an IPO until october.

But with an IPO on the way sooner than market investors think and a court victory against Elon Musk this week, this could be a comeback moment, according to Ives.

“It all started with the lawsuit,” he said. “And filing for an IPO now is a great one-two punch to start putting out the negative fire on them.”

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes a minority investment in CNBC.