Which private AI companies are closest to an IPO?

Why does the private AI IPO race suddenly feel real?

The private AI IPO race has become real because Anthropic and OpenAI have both entered the SEC process, while Cerebras has already shown that public investors will buy a huge pure-play AI offering.

Cerebras is useful as the starting point because it has already left this ranking. The AI-chip company began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker CBRS after pricing its IPO at $185 a share and ultimately raising about $6.4 billion including the underwriters' option. Nasdaq said the deal was heavily oversubscribed. A company that had spent years being discussed as a difficult AI IPO actually got the offering done.

The frontier-model companies followed quickly. Anthropic announced that it had confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC. OpenAI did the same days later. That takes the discussion far beyond founders saying they might eventually go public.

The financial scale has also changed. Databricks now says its annualized revenue run rate exceeds $7 billion. Anduril expects about $4.3 billion of revenue this year, roughly twice its 2025 level. ElevenLabs crossed $500 million of ARR after ending 2025 around $350 million, while Glean reached $300 million only 15 months after passing $100 million.

A few years ago, most private AI companies were simply too young or too small for a serious IPO discussion. Today, several already have the revenue of large public software companies. The harder question is which management teams actually want to list.

What does “closest to an IPO” really mean for a private AI company?

The private AI company closest to an IPO today is the one furthest through the actual listing process, rather than the company with the largest valuation.

That distinction changes the ranking immediately. Filing a confidential draft S-1 is much stronger evidence than hiring a finance executive or talking about being “IPO ready.” Choosing lead underwriters moves the process another step forward. Preparing the public version of the S-1 goes further still because investors are about to see audited financial statements, risk factors and detailed disclosures.

Business maturity still counts. A company needs enough revenue, a credible financial story, internal controls and management able to operate under public scrutiny. Those things tell us whether an IPO is possible. They do not tell us whether management intends to do one soon.

Databricks illustrates the difference perfectly. The company has multibillion-dollar revenue and positive cash flow, yet CEO Ali Ghodsi has been comfortable raising privately. Anthropic is economically less conventional, but it has already filed and is now assembling the banks that would execute the offering.

We therefore give the most weight to actions that are hard to dismiss as general preparation.

IPO evidence	What it tells us
Confidential S-1 filed	The company has entered the SEC review process
Lead underwriters chosen	The offering is moving toward execution
Public S-1 prepared	Investors are about to see the company in detail
Management gives a listing window	The company has shown real timing intent
IPO-ready finance and governance	The company could list, although it may still wait

Is Anthropic the private AI company closest to an IPO right now?

Anthropic is currently the clearest number one because its IPO process has advanced further than any other major private AI company.

Anthropic confidentially filed its draft S-1 earlier this year. The much fresher development came this week, when the Financial Times reported that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were close to securing leading roles in the deal. Morgan Stanley is expected to get the especially important “lead-left” position, while Goldman Sachs is expected to handle stabilization.

The same reporting says Anthropic has been preparing the public prospectus and could move into a roadshow soon afterward. That is a very different stage from simply having lawyers draft confidential paperwork.

Once the public S-1 appears, we should learn far more about Anthropic than private-market investors have disclosed so far: revenue recognition, cloud costs, customer concentration, long-term compute commitments, losses and the mechanics of its unusual governance structure.

There are still reasons the process could slow. Market conditions could turn. Investors could challenge Anthropic's valuation. The public financials could reveal weaker economics than private-market headlines imply. None of those possibilities changes where Anthropic stands today.

Among the private AI companies we reviewed, Anthropic is the one behaving most like a company that expects to sell shares to the public soon.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AI infrastructure market report.

Is OpenAI just as close to an IPO as Anthropic?

OpenAI is clearly the second-closest private AI company to an IPO, although Anthropic has pulled ahead in the latest phase of the process.

OpenAI also submitted a confidential S-1. That already separates it from almost the entire private AI market. Major banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan have also been involved around OpenAI's IPO preparations, according to reporting from Axios.

The difference is what OpenAI itself said when it announced the filing. The company explicitly said it had not decided on timing and that there were things it still wanted to do that could be easier while remaining private. The filing gives OpenAI the option to move faster without forcing it to use that option.

Anthropic now appears to be choosing banks for specific senior underwriting roles and preparing the public version of its prospectus. OpenAI has not shown the same degree of visible execution yet.

That gap could disappear quickly. A confidential filer can accelerate once management decides the timing is right. OpenAI is therefore far closer to Anthropic than it is to Databricks, Anduril or any of the other companies in this article.

For now, Anthropic has done more to show that the IPO is becoming a transaction rather than merely an available strategic choice.

Why could Anthropic IPO before the much bigger OpenAI?

Anthropic could reach the stock market first because IPO timing now depends more on management choice than on which AI company is bigger.

OpenAI has more strategic complexity to manage before exposing itself fully to public investors. Its business spans consumer subscriptions, enterprise software, APIs, infrastructure partnerships and a huge set of capital commitments. It also operates under a governance arrangement in which the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation ultimately controls OpenAI Group PBC.

Remaining private gives OpenAI more freedom while those pieces keep moving. OpenAI said as much when it announced the confidential S-1.

Anthropic seems more willing to accept public-market constraints now. The company is already preparing the next steps with investment banks despite having access to enormous amounts of private capital itself.

There is also a competitive incentive. Going first would allow Anthropic to present its own financial story before investors can benchmark every number against OpenAI's disclosures. If Anthropic can establish a credible public valuation and explain its economics well, it gets to set part of the reference point for frontier-model companies.

That advantage disappears if OpenAI beats it to market.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AI infrastructure market report.

Has OpenAI fixed the corporate structure that once made an IPO difficult?

OpenAI has removed one of the biggest practical barriers to an IPO by converting its operating business into a public benefit corporation with conventional equity.

The old capped-profit arrangement was awkward for public markets. Investors were buying economic rights through a structure specifically designed to limit returns and preserve nonprofit control. That could work with a small group of sophisticated private backers, but it would have been difficult to explain to millions of public shareholders.

OpenAI Group PBC now issues conventional equity. Microsoft and other investors can hold recognizable ownership stakes, while the OpenAI Foundation retains control of the group.

The governance is still unusual. Public shareholders would own an economic interest in a company whose ultimate controlling body is mission-driven rather than shareholder-controlled. Investors would need to understand exactly when the Foundation could override normal commercial incentives and how board appointments work.

Anthropic faces its own version of this problem through the Long-Term Benefit Trust, which has substantial influence over the board. The Financial Times has recently highlighted that structure as an issue investors are likely to scrutinize closely during Anthropic's listing.

Frontier-model IPOs therefore come with a governance question that Databricks or Glean would not have to explain to the same degree. OpenAI has made its structure far more investable, but public shareholders would still be buying into something unusual.

Is Databricks actually more IPO-ready than Anthropic and OpenAI?

Databricks may be the most financially ready private AI company in the world, but today it is choosing private capital instead of an IPO.

The numbers are already well beyond what most software companies had when they went public. Databricks says annualized revenue has passed $7 billion, growth remains extremely fast at its current scale, and the company is cash-flow positive.

Its latest fundraising says even more about why an IPO can wait. Databricks recently raised about $5 billion at roughly a $190 billion valuation. Ali Ghodsi told TechCrunch that the company initially wanted around $1 billion, but investor demand reached roughly $15 billion.

That tells us something important about the IPO market these days. Databricks can obtain billions of dollars, offer liquidity to shareholders and establish a new valuation while staying private. Going public would add quarterly reporting, disclosure requirements and a new group of shareholders without solving an urgent financing problem.

Management has been unusually clear about this. Ghodsi has said the company prefers to wait rather than force an IPO simply because Databricks is large enough.

If Databricks changed its mind, it could probably move faster than most companies below it in this ranking. Until management does that, financial readiness alone cannot put Databricks ahead of two companies already in SEC review.

Company	Where it stands now	Main thing holding it back
Anthropic	Confidential S-1 filed; banks being assigned	Execution and market conditions
OpenAI	Confidential S-1 filed	Management still wants flexibility
Databricks	$7B+ run rate and cash-flow positive	Very little need to go public

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AI infrastructure market report.

Is Anduril likely to be the next big AI IPO after Anthropic and OpenAI?

Anduril is one of the strongest next-wave IPO candidates, although its current fundraising suggests management still sees plenty of value in staying private.

Anduril's business is already reaching a size that would comfortably support a major public listing. The company told Fortune that it expects about $4.3 billion of revenue this year, up from roughly $2.2 billion in 2025. Few private technology companies have ever reached that revenue level before going public.

Its capital needs are also unusually large. Anduril is building Arsenal-1 in Ohio, a roughly million-square-foot weapons manufacturing facility, while simultaneously funding autonomous aircraft, missiles, underwater systems and the Lattice software platform. Those projects absorb far more capital than a normal SaaS company needs.

An IPO would therefore make strategic sense eventually. Public equity can finance factories and long-duration defense programs without repeatedly returning to venture investors.

Anduril still has another option, and investors keep making that option attractive. The company raised about $5 billion at roughly a $61 billion valuation earlier this year, and more recent reporting says Anduril has been discussing another round that could push the valuation toward $100 billion.

That lowers the urgency of an IPO. Anduril is becoming a public-company-scale business while continuing to fund itself like a private one.

We would put Anduril near the front of the post-Anthropic/OpenAI queue, but there is still a real gap between an obvious eventual IPO candidate and a company already preparing its listing.

Could Lambda or Together AI jump ahead of older AI startups?

Lambda and Together AI deserve more attention in the IPO discussion because both are becoming capital-markets businesses unusually early, although Together has given the clearer timing hint.

Together AI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash told Axios that an IPO next year was possible. The company had just raised $800 million at an $8.3 billion valuation. For such a young company, even publicly entertaining an IPO on that timetable is significant.

Lambda is approaching the problem from another direction. It installed Michel Combes, an experienced telecom executive, as CEO and former AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan as chairman. Those appointments look well suited to a company that increasingly needs debt markets, institutional investors and huge infrastructure financing.

The latest Lambda financing is particularly revealing. Lambda closed a $926 million senior secured term loan backed by GPU infrastructure and contracted customer cash flows. Moody's gave the facility a Baa2 investment-grade rating. Lambda says it is the first private neocloud to complete a broadly syndicated term loan B with an investment-grade rating.

That financing does not mean an IPO is around the corner. It does show that Lambda is building the treasury and capital-markets machinery of a much larger company.

Together currently has the stronger explicit IPO comment. Lambda has the more visible institutionalization of its capital structure. Either could move up this ranking quickly if a confidential filing appears.

Are ElevenLabs and Glean already big enough to IPO?

ElevenLabs and Glean are both becoming large enough for public markets, but neither has shown the filing activity that would make an IPO look close today.

ElevenLabs has the more striking growth rate. The company ended 2025 around $350 million of ARR and said it had already passed $500 million within the first four months of this year. That means it added roughly $150 million of annualized recurring revenue in about one quarter.

The investor mix is also changing. ElevenLabs has brought in BlackRock and Wellington alongside Nvidia and existing venture investors. Those large institutional investors can own shares before and after an IPO, which makes them useful partners for companies approaching the public-market stage.

Glean's growth is slower in absolute dollars but unusually clean for an enterprise software company. Glean says it took around nine months to go from $100 million to $200 million of ARR and only six more months to reach $300 million. Its Fortune 500 customer count also nearly doubled year over year.

There is one wrinkle in the Glean number. TechCrunch pointed out that part of Glean's pricing is consumption-based, so the $300 million figure is not perfectly equivalent to traditional contractual SaaS ARR. Public investors would eventually separate fixed recurring commitments from annualized consumption.

Both companies have enough momentum to become serious IPO candidates. Today, though, their behavior still looks like companies using private capital to maximize growth rather than companies getting ready to market shares on Nasdaq.

Is Harvey close to an IPO, or is the legal AI company still too early?

Harvey is growing fast enough to enter the IPO conversation, but the legal AI company still looks at least one cycle behind ElevenLabs and Glean in public-market readiness.

Recent reporting puts Harvey at roughly $350 million of ARR, more than 200,000 lawyer users and around 1,200 employees. The company also raised $200 million at an $11 billion valuation earlier this year.

Those are serious numbers for a business founded only a few years ago. Harvey also has a customer base that public investors can understand: major law firms and corporate legal departments paying for software that gets embedded in expensive professional workflows.

The financial profile is less mature. Harvey is still unprofitable and is spending aggressively on product development, international expansion and more than 25,000 custom agents built for customers.

At this stage, another year of execution could improve Harvey's IPO case enormously. Public investors would want to see whether $350 million of ARR turns into $500 million, $700 million or more without hiring and infrastructure costs rising just as quickly.

Harvey belongs on the watchlist now. Calling it one of the companies closest to an IPO would still be premature.

Are huge private valuations actually delaying AI IPOs?

Huge private valuations and easier shareholder liquidity are probably delaying several AI IPOs because companies can now get many of the benefits of being public without listing.

Databricks is the strongest example. Investor demand was reportedly three times the $5 billion it ultimately raised. When private investors are willing to value the company around $190 billion and provide billions in fresh capital, an IPO solves very little.

Anduril is following a similar pattern. Its valuation moved from roughly $30 billion to around $61 billion, and discussions of another private round have reportedly reached the $100 billion area. ElevenLabs tripled its valuation to $11 billion in a year while raising another $500 million.

Liquidity has also become easier to create privately. Scale AI showed the extreme version when Meta invested more than $14 billion in the company. Scale said part of the proceeds would be distributed to shareholders and vested equity holders, giving employees and investors substantial liquidity while Scale remained independent.

This removes one of the old pressures that pushed mature startups toward the stock market. Employees can sell some shares, venture funds can return capital, and companies can raise multibillion-dollar rounds without publishing an S-1.

The irony is pretty simple: the AI funding boom is creating dozens of companies large enough to IPO while simultaneously giving many of them less reason to do it.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AI infrastructure market report.

Could a weak Anthropic IPO shut the AI IPO window again?

A disappointing Anthropic IPO could delay several other private AI listings because Anthropic will give public investors their first detailed look at the economics of a frontier-model company.

The numbers investors will care about go far beyond revenue growth. Anthropic consumes enormous amounts of computing power, depends heavily on cloud partners and has long-term infrastructure commitments that ordinary software companies do not carry.

Revenue presentation could become especially important. Axios recently highlighted differences in how Anthropic and OpenAI account for revenue distributed through partners. Once Anthropic publishes its S-1, investors should get a cleaner view of how much reported revenue translates into retained economics.

The valuation will amplify every concern. The Financial Times has reported that Anthropic is considering an IPO at an extraordinarily high valuation. At that level, good growth will not be enough. Public investors would have to believe the growth can remain exceptional for years while margins improve.

A strong reception would make life easier for OpenAI and establish a public benchmark for companies farther down the queue. Databricks, Anduril and large AI infrastructure businesses would suddenly have a much clearer reference point.

A weak debut would give well-funded private companies an easy reason to wait. Most of them have enough cash and investor demand to do exactly that.

So which private AI companies are closest to an IPO today?

Anthropic is currently the private AI company closest to an IPO, OpenAI is the only serious challenger in the immediate queue, and the distance to everyone else is substantial.

Anthropic has the strongest combination of hard process evidence we can find: a confidential S-1, active selection of senior underwriters and preparation of a public prospectus. The latest reporting suggests the company could move quickly from here if market conditions cooperate.

OpenAI sits just behind it. The company has already crossed the crucial confidential-filing threshold and has major banks around the process. OpenAI itself, however, keeps stressing that the timing remains flexible.

Databricks comes next because almost every financial obstacle has disappeared. More than $7 billion of annualized revenue, positive cash flow and overwhelming investor demand would make it a very credible public company. Management simply prefers private markets for now.

Anduril is the strongest large candidate behind Databricks. Revenue is heading toward the mid-single-digit billions, its factories and defense programs consume huge amounts of capital, and an eventual IPO makes strategic sense. Recent private fundraising shows there is no rush.

The next group is more fluid. Together AI has already floated a possible next-year IPO. Lambda is building increasingly sophisticated capital-market infrastructure. ElevenLabs and Glean are reaching revenue levels where an IPO can become realistic quickly. Harvey is growing fast enough to enter the conversation but still needs more financial maturity.

The key observation after reviewing the latest evidence is how short the true IPO queue actually is. Plenty of private AI companies could go public. Only Anthropic and OpenAI currently look like companies that have genuinely started doing it.

Rank	Private AI company	How close does it look today?	Why
1	Anthropic	Very close	Confidential S-1, lead-bank selection, public prospectus preparation
2	OpenAI	Very close	Confidential S-1 filed, major banks involved, timing still flexible
3	Databricks	Ready whenever management wants	$7B+ revenue run rate, cash-flow positive, but private capital remains abundant
4	Anduril	Strong next-wave candidate	~$4.3B expected revenue and huge long-term capital needs
5	Together AI	Emerging candidate	CEO has publicly discussed a possible next-year IPO
6	Lambda	Emerging candidate	Institutional leadership and increasingly sophisticated debt financing
7	ElevenLabs	Fast-rising future candidate	$500M+ ARR and new crossover investors
8	Glean	Fast-rising future candidate	$300M revenue run rate/ARR with accelerating enterprise adoption
9	Harvey	Plausible later candidate	~$350M ARR but still loss-making and investing heavily

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AI infrastructure market report.

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