AI giants face challenge of accountability to Wall Street with new IPOs

OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX will soon have a new boss to report to: Wall Street.

OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, is the latest AI giant to announce plans to go public, following in the footsteps of Anthropic, which last week confidentially said it had filed for an IPO.

SpaceX, which includes xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, is expected to debut on the market this Friday (12). The three initial public offerings are expected to provide the most detailed look yet at the AI market - and potentially raise hundreds of billions of dollars in massive share sales.

This also means that its AI businesses, which are already approaching trillion-dollar valuations, will be subject to greater scrutiny than ever as Wall Street demands explosive growth every three months.

"Expectations that seem manageable in private markets can become unforgiving under the watchful eye of public ownership," said Nigel Green, CEO of financial advisory firm deVere Group, in an email to CNN.

Wall Street already has sky-high expectations for AI, leaving no room for anything less than massive growth every quarter.

For example, Broadcom, which previously partnered with OpenAI and Anthropic, delivered impressive results: 48% revenue growth in the second quarter and expected 180% growth in the semiconductor segment compared to last year.

But that wasn't enough to impress investors; Broadcom shares fell more than 13% last week, recording its worst week since September 2024.

Shares of AI chipmakers tumbled along with the market late last week, with the Nasdaq falling for three straight days and the S&P 500 recording its worst day since October.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the performance of shares of memory chip makers fell 15% in the last week.

"People want more," Stacy Rasgon, a Bernstein analyst who follows the semiconductor market, told CNN last week when discussing chip stocks. "They always want more."

Even Nvidia, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, has faced similar scrutiny.

In January 2025, the AI chipmaker lost a record market value of US$600 billion in a single day, following the emergence of DeepSeek, a new Chinese competitor.

Increased scrutiny of AI
OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be held to similar standards, with their business performance serving as indicators of the growth of the AI sector.

Wall Street will also be watching for signs that both companies have the capital needed to support their massive investments in AI infrastructure.

Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have shown some signs of growth.

But they chose to release these statistics publicly rather than fulfill their legal responsibility.

OpenAI announced in March that it had raised $122 billion, bringing its market value to $852 billion. The company also reported that month that it is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, a significant increase from the $1 billion it previously generated quarterly.

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According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT also became the fastest app to reach one billion users last month.

Apps like Google Maps, TikTok and YouTube took five to eight years to reach this milestone, while ChatGPT achieved it in about three years, the company said.

Anthropic's valuation jumped from $380 billion in February to $965 billion in May, surpassing OpenAI's, the company announced in May.

Anthropic also reported last month that it had achieved recurring revenue of $47 billion, a metric that estimates future annual revenue based on current financial data.

According to fintech Ramp, for the first time in May, more companies used Anthropic than OpenAI.

The IPO may indicate that OpenAI and Anthropic have gained enough confidence in their respective paths to profitability to take on Wall Street.

OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on the timing of their IPO filings.

But the numbers are just the beginning.

Analysts are likely to question Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, about the future of their businesses and upcoming products during earnings calls, looking for signs that they have unlimited growth potential.

This means they may have to respond publicly about things like delays in the release of future models and how they plan to translate those models into paid products.

Shifts in product focus, like OpenAI's decision to shut down its Sora video app, will likely face many more questions.

"Private investors can support a vision and wait years for results," Green wrote. "Public markets rarely offer this luxury."

Source: CNN