The clock on AI IPOs: why waiting could cost OpenAI and Anthropic dearly

By Barron's · July 1, 2026. The news, at its core, is brief but significant: according to Barron's, a Deutsche Bank analyst argues that OpenAI and Anthropic would do well not to delay their respective initial public offerings, despite the market showing growing distrust toward recent tech IPOs. The article notes that OpenAI is reportedly considering postponing its own until 2027, a decision this analyst sees as potentially risky.

The available material is scant —the rest of the article is behind Barron's paywall— so it is best not to over-interpret beyond what the headline and opening say: there is a market-timing thesis, not a confirmed announcement of a date or valuation figures. But the fact itself, however minimal, is revealing of a dynamic we have been observing in the sector for months.

The 'strike while the iron is hot' logic is nothing new on Wall Street, but applied to OpenAI and Anthropic it has a particular nuance: both companies have built astronomical valuations in private rounds based on expectations of almost uninterrupted growth. That kind of valuation is far easier to sustain in a private market, where institutional investors and sovereign funds negotiate directly with the company, than in a public market where the price is set minute by minute and any weak quarter, any Chinese competitor closing in on benchmarks, or any sign of a slowdown in enterprise adoption can send the stock plunging. Delaying the IPO does not eliminate that risk: it only postpones it, and in the meantime the market for tech IPOs has become more skeptical, not less.

Our reading is that this kind of analyst warning, however modest it may seem, points to an underlying tension in the AI industry: the leading companies have enjoyed years of almost unlimited capital at valuations that would be dizzying in a traditional IPO, and now they face the question of whether those valuations will survive public scrutiny. In general, when the private market starts to show signs of fatigue —slower rounds, more demanding terms— it tends to be the signal that the window to go public on favorable terms is closing, not opening. If OpenAI waits until 2027 trusting that things will improve, it runs the risk that Chinese competition (which in our own quality indexes is already snapping at the heels of Western models on several metrics) erodes part of the narrative of absolute dominance that today underpins its valuation.

That said, it is worth maintaining the caution such limited material demands: we do not know what specific arguments the Deutsche Bank analyst puts forward beyond the headline, nor whether Anthropic shares the same timelines or pressures as OpenAI. What is consistent with what we have been observing is that the phase of unlimited private capital for generative AI has an expiration date, and that the moment of going public —with all the discipline of transparency and quarterly scrutiny that entails— will, sooner or later, be the real test of whether these companies are worth what they say they are worth. In the long run, that market discipline is not bad news: it forces the promise of technological abundance to be turned into measurable results, which is exactly what a sector still dominated by narrative and private rounds needs.