Two of the biggest names in artificial intelligence may soon be ones you can buy a piece of.
According to coverage from Yahoo Finance and The Motley Fool, both Anthropic and OpenAI could go public in 2026. The reports frame this alongside the recent initial public offering, or IPO, of Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, which has already made its market debut. The Motley Fool piece poses the question many investors are now asking: with all three on the table, should you buy into them?
An IPO is the moment a privately held company first sells shares to the public, opening the door for ordinary investors to own a stake. Until now, exposure to the leading AI labs has largely been limited to private backers and the big tech firms that fund them.
But the path to a public listing is not guaranteed. A report from 24/7 Wall St. raises a pointed concern: whether a broader tech stock rout could force Anthropic to pull its IPO. Companies often delay or scrap public offerings when market conditions sour, because a falling market can mean a lower valuation and weaker demand for new shares.
The sources here are headlines and framing rather than confirmed filing dates, so the timing and even the certainty of these debuts remain open questions. What is clear is that the prospect is now being openly discussed across financial media.
Why it matters: if Anthropic and OpenAI follow SpaceX onto public markets, everyday investors could finally buy directly into the AI boom — but a shaky stock market may decide whether those debuts happen on schedule, or at all.