OpenAI plans to go public, intensifying investment race with Anthropic

OpenAI has filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue an initial public offering (IPO, a process where a private company sells shares to the public on the stock market) at some point in the future, though the company has not decided on timing yet. This move intensifies competition with rival AI company Anthropic, which announced similar IPO plans one week earlier, as both companies compete for users, customers, and investors with valuations approaching $1 trillion. Going public would provide these AI companies with billions of dollars in capital, which they need because running AI systems requires enormous compute costs (the infrastructure and processing power needed to build, train, and operate AI models).