OpenAI has reached an implied valuation of $1 trillion pre-IPO, putting it in the middle of a high-risk race with SpaceX and Anthropic for the next big listing. This is according to data from pre-IPO on-chain trading instruments supported 1:1 by SPV exposure on Jupiter.
With these tools, traders can now see live what the market thinks OpenAI could be worth when it finally goes public.
This implied value has increased by 163% since October 2025, when rumors of a possible $1 trillion-plus IPO first began circulating. SpaceX is reportedly seeking more than $1.7 trillion, while Anthropic is also nearing the same $1 trillion mark.
When OpenAI was developed, an AI would be “beneficial to humanity” and would prevent a few giant companies from controlling the entire field.
This goal made OpenAI look different from Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, which built their businesses on closed systems and tight control over products and profits.
OpenAI is ditching its old model as AI costs rise rapidly
Initially, OpenAI focused on open research and knowledge sharing. This idea was integrated directly into the name. Then the money problem became too big to ignore. Generative AI is expensive compared to regular software. It costs next to nothing to reproduce a copy of old-fashioned software on a large scale. AI doesn’t work like that. Each prompt consumes computing power, electricity, and specialized hardware.
A simple ChatGPT exchange, a question and an answer, can cost between $0.01 and $0.10. A high-resolution image can cost between $0.10 and $0.20.
That sounds small until usage reaches billions of requests per day in 2026. The main load comes from GPUs, most of which are supplied by Nvidia. These chips can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase, and cloud access can also cost several dollars per hour for each chip.
OpenAI and its competitors need tens of thousands of them running constantly in large data centers. Some estimates suggest the required investments could reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of this decade.
These pressures had already become evident at the end of the 2010s. A purely non-profit structure could not keep up with such expenses.
In 2019, OpenAI therefore introduced a hybrid structure that allowed it to raise capital while maintaining control of a foundation. This was the company’s first real step toward market logic, even if it still tried to keep some of its original mission alive.
OpenAI benefits from ChatGPT’s growth while Anthropic stumbles over Claude Code’s pricing
Then ChatGPT blew the doors off in late 2022, attracting 100 million users in just two months. By early 2026, it had surpassed 900 million weekly users. Revenues went in the same direction. OpenAI grew from about $200 million in 2022 to over $10 billion in 2025.
That’s a 60-fold increase in three years. Consumer subscriptions now cost between $20 and $200 per month, while enterprise plans cost around $25 to $60 per user per month, meaning a company with 10,000 employees can generate millions of dollars in annual revenue.
While OpenAI pushes for an IPO, Anthropic is struggling with price setbacks. The issue started when users on social media noticed that Claude Code was no longer showing as available to Pro users on Anthropic’s pricing page.
Had this been a complete change, it would have meant that the coding tool was no longer part of the $20 monthly plan and would have required a $100 monthly subscription instead. Users didn’t take this well.
Anthropic later said that nothing had changed for existing users and that the pricing page was part of an experiment that affected only 2% of new signups.
During this confusion, Sam Altman and other OpenAI employees jumped in and used the moment to draw attention to Codex, OpenAI’s competing coding tool.
Sam responded to Anthropic’s head of growth with “ok boomer” and then posted“I had a few drinks today.”
