Anthropic vs. OpenAI: The 2026 IPO Race and Its Infrastructure Bet

The AI infrastructure sector is on the cusp of a major valuation test. The impending public listings of Anthropic and OpenAI are not just corporate milestones; they are the first real catalysts that will force a discipline onto the exponential growth narrative. This transition from private funding to public markets will be a critical point on the adoption S-curve, where lofty private valuations meet the scrutiny of quarterly earnings.

Anthropic is preparing for this test with a reported valuation of $350 billion. The company has formally engaged law firm Wilson Sonsini and is in early-stage discussions with investment banks, signaling groundwork for a potential IPO as early as 2026. This move follows a dramatic valuation jump from $183 billion in September 2025 to the current target. The thesis is that Anthropic's strong enterprise customer base, which reportedly makes up 80% of its revenue, provides a steadier growth profile that public markets may reward. Yet the timeline remains fluid, with a filing not yet public and an early 2026 launch considered unlikely without one.

OpenAI is positioned even higher on the private valuation curve, with a reported worth of $500 billion. Its potential IPO is part of a broader 'IPO supercycle' for mega-tech firms, alongside SpaceX, that could redefine the public market's appetite for frontier technology. The sheer scale of these valuations-OpenAI's being nearly double Anthropic's-sets a high bar for the public market to clear. The key question for investors is whether the market's willingness to fund exponential growth will persist once these companies are forced to report quarterly.

The bottom line is that these IPOs will act as a reality check. They will introduce the volatility and pressure of public scrutiny to a sector that has thrived on private capital. For Nvidia and its partners, whose own valuations are deeply tied to the AI infrastructure build-out, this shift could create significant turbulence. The market's verdict on these first major listings will determine the slope of the adoption curve for years to come.

Financial Performance and Adoption Curves

The real story behind the IPO frenzy is the underlying adoption curve. For all the talk of private valuations, the market is betting on a fundamental shift in how AI is used and paid for. The numbers show this isn't just hype; it's a rapid commercial inflection.

Anthropic's financial trajectory is a textbook example of exponential growth in action. Its revenue run rate has more than doubled since last summer, hitting more than $9 billion at the end of 2025. That's a staggering acceleration from a $4 billion run rate just six months prior. This isn't just scaling; it's a step-change in enterprise adoption, driven by tools like Claude that are being embedded into business workflows. The investor frenzy that followed, with a financing round targeting $10 billion and potential commitments easily surpassing $20 billion, is a direct vote of confidence in this adoption rate.

This company-level surge is part of a much larger, multi-year infrastructure build-out. The global AI infrastructure market itself is projected to grow from $90 billion in 2026 to $465 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 24%. This creates a massive, multi-year runway for the hardware and cloud providers that are the true infrastructure layer. The hardware segment alone is expected to dominate, accounting for over half the market, which underscores the capital-intensive nature of this paradigm shift.

The most critical inflection point, however, is the shift from training to inference. This is where the monetization begins. Nvidia's CEO has framed it clearly: "inference is the monetization of artificial intelligence." Training models is a capital-intensive, batch process. Inference-the real-time application of those models-is the ongoing, operational cost of AI. As adoption moves from experimentation to deployment, this creates a new, sustained phase of compute demand. The market's recent skepticism toward Nvidia's epic earnings report, despite its data center run rate passing $200 billion, may reflect a short-term focus on speculative fears. But the long-term trend is clear: the infrastructure for inference is being built at an unprecedented pace, and the financials are starting to reflect that reality.

Nvidia Partnership Terms and Infrastructure Commitments

The partnership deals between Nvidia and its two leading AI model builders are a direct bet on the exponential growth of compute demand. While both agreements are massive, they differ in scale and structure, with OpenAI's representing a far more committed, long-term infrastructure wager.

Anthropic's deal is a powerful, multi-faceted commitment. The company has pledged to purchase $30 billion of Azure compute capacity and to contract for up to one gigawatt of NVIDIA systems. This is backed by significant financial support from the partners: NVIDIA and Microsoft are committing to invest up to $10 billion and up to $5 billion respectively in Anthropic. This creates a closed-loop ecosystem where Anthropic's growth is funded by its cloud and chip partners, locking in substantial, near-term compute orders.

OpenAI's partnership, however, is on a different plane. It is a parallel, larger-scale infrastructure bet where NVIDIA intends to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI progressively as each gigawatt is deployed. The core commitment is to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure. This is a decade-long build-out, with the first phase targeted for the second half of 2026. The scale is staggering: 10 gigawatts represents millions of GPUs, dwarfing the one-gigawatt commitment from Anthropic.

The bottom line is that OpenAI's deal is a stronger, more committed infrastructure bet. It is a direct, multi-decade capital infusion from Nvidia to fund OpenAI's massive expansion, effectively pre-paying for a huge portion of Nvidia's future hardware sales. This locks in demand for a decade. Anthropic's deal is also significant, but it is more of a commercial partnership with a large upfront purchase commitment and partner funding, rather than a pure infrastructure investment vehicle. For Nvidia, both deals fuel its data center segment, which grew 66% year over year to $51.2 billion in Q3 2026. Yet OpenAI's $100 billion investment letter of intent represents a deeper, more committed bet on the long-term compute S-curve.

Investment Thesis and Forward Scenarios

The investment case for Nvidia is a study in exponential growth versus market psychology. The company trades at a premium, with a trailing P/E of 45.97 and a forward P/E of 50.45. Yet its recent stock performance tells a more nuanced story. Over the past 120 days, the shares have climbed 8.03%, and the rolling annual return stands at 34.86%. These gains are real, but they are modest against the backdrop of epic financial results. The primary risk is a market that gets stuck in a "pit of speculative fears," as seen after its record Q3 earnings. Despite data center revenue passing $200 billion and a 25% sequential growth rate, the stock barely budged. The market chose to focus on hypothetical, immaterial risks-AI bubble debates, supply chain hiccups, geopolitical tensions-over the undeniable momentum of the inference phase.

The key catalyst now is timing. The Anthropic IPO, if it materializes in 2026, will be the first major public test of the AI infrastructure paradigm. Its valuation, reported at $350 billion, will force a discipline onto the private market's exponential growth narrative. For Nvidia, this creates a binary forward scenario. A successful IPO could validate the entire growth trajectory, triggering a re-rating of the infrastructure story. It would confirm that the market is willing to pay for the massive compute commitments, like the $30 billion Azure deal and the $100 billion investment letter for OpenAI, as foundational rails for the next economy.

Yet the opposite is also possible. If the IPO is delayed or priced below private expectations, it could signal a peak in speculative fervor. This would pressure the valuation model for all infrastructure plays, including Nvidia, by questioning the sustainability of near-term growth rates. The bottom line is that Nvidia's premium valuation is a bet on a multi-decade compute S-curve. The Anthropic IPO is the first public checkpoint on that curve. Investors must decide whether to bet that the market's speculative fears will eventually give way to the reality of monetized AI, or if the turbulence of the transition will overshadow the long-term exponential trend.