Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are dividing their banker ranks into separate teams to handle what could be dueling initial public offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic this fall, people familiar with the matter said, a sign of the dominance the two banks have achieved in technology-industry listings and the rare challenge of taking two direct competitors public at the same time.
The S&P 500 edged up to 7,511.35 on Wednesday as markets weighed the implications of a busy second-half IPO calendar. The year is shaping up as one of the busiest for public listings after years of muted activity, concentrated heavily in large AI-related and defense companies.
The firewall arrangement is designed to prevent the sharing of confidential financial details and strategic information between the two companies, the people said. Banks routinely take care to avoid even the appearance of conflicts on all deals, from IPOs to mergers and acquisitions. But the current situation is unprecedented in recent memory: no two competing companies have gone public simultaneously using the same lead underwriters.
When ride-share rivals Lyft and Uber both went public in 2019, the work was split between separate banks. JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Jefferies led Lyft’s offering, while Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America led Uber’s.
The full bank lineups for OpenAI and Anthropic are not yet finalized, the people said. Chief among the considerations for bankers signing on to either company are existing client relationships. Both AI companies also bring potential complications that advisers will need to navigate.
OpenAI has been trying to catch up with Anthropic in the race for lucrative enterprise customers, the people said. Anthropic, meanwhile, is seen as more vulnerable to interference from the Trump administration, which recently banned foreign use of its most powerful AI tools; the two sides are discussing a potential deal to restore access.
OpenAI has said publicly that “it may be a while” until it goes public because there are “things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company.”
The unusual situation reflects the stronghold Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley now have in technology-industry IPOs. The two banks served as lead underwriters for SpaceX’s record $86 billion offering last week, which used a total of 23 banks. Morgan Stanley and Goldman each collected fees of around $100 million for that deal; the remaining banks split the roughly $500 million total fee pool.
Bankers at Goldman and Morgan Stanley who worked on the SpaceX offering avoided weighing in on the two AI companies’ preliminary IPO paperwork, the people said, given that SpaceX has a nascent AI business and is considered a rival.
Anthropic and OpenAI filed for IPOs confidentially within days of each other earlier this month, putting them on track to launch offerings as soon as August. Post-Labor Day offerings are more likely, according to people familiar with the matter. MSI previously reported that both AI companies were racing toward public listings as first-mover stakes mounted.