Anthropic Remains the Last AI IPO Hope for 2026 Amid Wider Market Delays

A SpaceX advertisement on a Times Square digital billboard marks the launch of the company’s New York IPO on June 12, 2026.

Angela Weiss | Afp | Getty Images

Looking ahead to 2026, investors were optimistic about a wave of new IPOs from mega‑cap private firms such as SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.

However, expectations have been tempered as OpenAI has ruled out a 2026 public debut and several other planned offerings have been delayed this year.

On the prediction‑market platform Kalshi, traders now view Anthropic as the sole major AI firm still likely to announce an IPO this year, after it filed confidentially with the SEC in early June.

Kalshi’s market asks whether a list of companies will officially announce an IPO in 2026. An official announcement is defined as an SEC‑declared effective S‑1, an IPO price, or a ticker assignment, and resolutions are sourced from multiple news outlets.

Among the 23 firms tracked by Kalshi, only Anthropic carries odds above 50%—currently around 75%—to officially announce an IPO this year.

Financial‑technology firm Plaid was given 50% odds by traders in January to go public this year, but confidence has fallen to roughly 10% for the $8 billion‑valued company.

HR and payroll platform Deel’s odds have slipped from 50% in February to about 3% for a 2026 IPO, while AI‑focused cloud firm Databricks now trades at roughly 1% after peaking above 50% in January.

OpenAI, Anthropic’s main competitor, carries only a 3% chance of going public after CEO Sam Altman said a listing would be unwise given AI‑safety concerns. Kalshi traders now price a 50‑50 chance of an OpenAI IPO announcement by June 2027.

Growing IPO Postponements

IPO postponements have accelerated across sectors in recent weeks. Although overall proceeds have risen sharply—fueled by mega‑cap launches such as SpaceX in June—the number of U.S. IPOs priced this year has actually fallen 33% relative to 2025, Renaissance Capital data show.

Investors are counting on major AI firms and related companies to transition from private to public markets in search of larger capital pools to fund rapid expansion. Public listings are viewed as the next logical step to sustain that blistering growth.

However, bullish growth expectations were shaken last week when Anthropic reported third‑quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, a deceleration in quarter‑over‑quarter growth.

“More questions than answers emerged around the reasons for revenue growth deceleration in September and whether Anthropic can grow revenue at the rate the market is expecting given dynamics such as [large language model] pricing pressure,” wrote 22V Research analyst Dauvin Peterson on Sunday. “At the end of the day, the revised IPO valuation range starting at $1.5T vs the prior expectation of at least $2T was viewed as disappointing and added fuel to the fire for the AI‑related equities that were already under pressure.”

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