A wave of mega-IPOs led by SpaceX, followed by OpenAI and Anthropic, could absorb so much investor demand in 2026 that other highly valued tech firms may delay going public until 2027. Investor focus is expected to concentrate first on SpaceX’s listing, prompting pre-IPO software companies to adjust their timelines to avoid overlapping with its roadshow.
Within this context, Anthropic’s sudden revenue surge is central: its annualized revenue has reportedly “surpassed $30 billion,” apparently overtaking OpenAI’s more than $24 billion annualized, based on its disclosure of generating $2 billion per month. This marks a dramatic shift from early 2025 and early 2026, when OpenAI still held a sizable lead.
Anthropic’s acceleration stems largely from enterprise adoption of its coding agents and Claude plug-ins, which drive heavy token usage and have even roiled software and services stocks. Despite a Pentagon blacklist, its business momentum continues in the corporate market.
However, some investors argue that comparing the two firms’ revenues is “apples to oranges” because Anthropic counts gross revenue while OpenAI reports net of hyperscaler fees, suggesting OpenAI might still lead if measured on the same basis.
The narrative highlights that the key to monetization is not user counts, where ChatGPT dominates, but token volume, making a small base of intensive developer workloads more lucrative than millions of casual users. OpenAI is therefore shifting its roadmap toward enterprise tools such as Codex and away from consumer-facing products like Sora, seeking to capture high-value, token-intensive use cases before its planned IPO.
Noting that both companies’ ability to win enterprise clients will heavily influence the financial profiles they present to investors, while a separate analysis warns that the trillions needed for AI data centers may exceed realistic funding capacity by 2030.
Reference
Cai, K. (2026, April 8). Anthropic may have closed the revenue gap on OpenAI. Here’s what it means for their IPOs. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-versus-anthropic-what-revenue-race-means-their-ipos-2026-04-08/