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Open AI is off the hook when it comes to a trial in Oakland, but it might be running headlong into serious headwinds when it comes to its IPO race with Anthropic. A jury and a judge found today in favor of Open AI and against Elon Musk who brought a lawsuit against the company approximately two years ago.
The jury found that Elon Musk waited too long and that the statute of limitations had passed for this case and the judge agreed. And all of this happened in record time. The jury found for the defendants in just two hours and the judge apparently in just minutes decided that she also agreed. Now, there was a lot of drama and back and forth.
We did a big episode on this about a week ago. We'll link to it if you want that context. But since that episode, the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has testified as did Sam Altman, one of the defendants in this case. There was a lot of testimony also from the former CTO of Open AI, Mira Murati, and just a whole host of characters and dirty laundry that were basically aired as part of this trial.
Now, Elon Musk appears to likely have known that this wasn't going to be found in his favor, but perhaps the purpose was really just to embarrass Open AI and he may have succeeded if that was in fact the goal given the amount of testimony and the real questions around the honesty and accuracy of information being shared by its CEO in many different examples, and also lots of questions being raised about the intent behind the creation of the original nonprofit, and also maybe the ethics and values of some of the co-founders, particularly Greg Brockman.
Musk was suing Open AI and wanted to get both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman removed from the company. He was also seeking to get Altman removed from the board of OpenAI. And his ultimate goal, which he shared in a filing just before the trial started, was to have the company revert back to its original nonprofit status and for 134 billion dollars to be returned to that entity.
Now, today none of that is going to happen. It appears that Elon Musk does have the ability to appeal, but the judge has signaled that it's unlikely that she's going to take an appeal under consideration. And so very likely this is the end of the trial. But the more interesting question I think coming out of this is, what does this mean for OpenAI in their run for an IPO?
Both OpenAI and their bitter rivals just down the road at Anthropic are doing everything they can to hit an IPO in 2026. Now, the overall timeline Anthropic, according to reporting, is said to be targeting an October date. And so given that we're at the end of May right now, that doesn't really give the OpenAI crew all that much time to work through a massive list of challenges.
And let's run through those. OpenAI is doing everything it possibly can to try to hit an IPO in 2026. Unfortunately, they've missed investor targets for revenue and for user growth, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal. Their CFO has also said that they are not ready for an IPO. She was saying this back in August of 2025, according to the information.
And there's been additional reporting this year to corroborate that. In addition, there is some reputational damage coming out of the trial. One of the things that came to light is the fact that Sam Altman owns approximately 2 billion dollars of stakes in other companies that have ties to Open AI. And a result of this, a committee in Congress, the House Oversight Committee, has kicked off an inquiry.
So, who knows where that actually lands. But, it's a level of scrutiny that Altman and Open AI are unlikely to want at this moment in time. Now, Anthropic is said to be targeting an IPO as early as October, which really doesn't give Open AI very much time. Why are we working on AI in the first place?
I'm just going to arbitrarily pick Jared. Why are you doing AI at all? I mean, I was working on physics for a long time, and I got bored, and I wanted to hang out with more of my friends, so. Yeah, I thought I already pitched you on it. I don't think I I think I explicitly pitched you any point. I just kind of like showed you results of like AI models, and then and and was trying to make the point that like they're very general, and like they don't only apply to one thing, and then like just at some point after I showed you enough of them, you were like, "Oh, yeah, that seems like it's Right.
According to new reporting from the Financial Times, they're also seeking to raise another $30 billion. That would take their valuation to 900 billion, and we have a chart for you from PitchBook and the Financial Times, and it shows the dramatic increase in valuations of both Anthropic and Open AI over the last few years.
And keep in mind that while Open AI has been around since 2015, Anthropic is a post-COVID company. So, it's really come out of nowhere, particularly in the last 18 months. And if this report is correct, as both PitchBook and the Financial Times are saying, it looks like for the first time, Anthropic has actually overtaken Open AI in terms of its valuation.
Some additional data, the valuation levels here, and you can see in this other chart, which is also from PitchBook, you can see that the valuation growth in AI is really dramatically more than other major sectors. And it's also happening over a very short period of time. Now, if you're an investor who is bullish or just someone out there who loves these companies, you might think this is great and maybe it is.
The other side of the coin might be that this is very bubbly and frothy and that these aren't going to be valuations that are going to hold up in public markets over time. And really, we don't know the answer to that yet. We're going to have to see what happens when these companies go public. And one more data point, this comes to us from the Wall Street Journal and it is based on data from Ramp.
In the United States, more than 34% of businesses are using Anthropic's products compared to 32.3% using OpenAI. And this is also notable because for the first time, Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI. Now, this would be supported by other reporting that we've seen, which indicates that Anthropic's revenue is much stronger than OpenAI.
And they also have a much wider base of enterprise customers. And in general, that is seen to be a better, more profitable business model. Again, if you can sustain it over time. Now, 2026 promises to be a really strong year for IPOs. We are expecting three of the biggest IPOs of all time, SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI if it can get there.
And collectively, we're talking about valuations that basically are going to be three trillion dollars if we can even wrap our brains around it. I know I'm struggling to do that. But nonetheless, it's been a banner year for IPOs so far. Just last week, Cerebras finally went public. This is a chip maker and they are trying to compete with Nvidia.
They actually tried to go public in 2024 and they had to pull that IPO. At the time, one of the big concerns was the fact that 80% of their revenues in the first half of 2024 came from one company out of the UAE, which meant that they had to undergo a CFIUS review. CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and they have to clear deals when foreign investments come to bear.
Now, Cerebrus is making investors everywhere super happy. They went public last Thursday. Their stock popped something like 70%, which took their market cap to $95 billion. Their stock declined 10% on Friday. And so, one of the questions here for all of these companies is what happens over the long term.
The investors who've been backing a company for years and years, maybe even a decade, are understandably completely focused on the debut price, and they want a strong showing. That's going to be really great for their investments. But, the bigger question for retail investors and institutional investors who are going to hold these stocks on the public market, the question for them is is there long-term value or does it meet their investment goals if they have some other objective in mind.
And with a company like Cerebrus, it's just really hard to know if they're going to be able to seriously compete with Nvidia over time, or if this is a flash, and it's going to actually dissipate and maybe disappoint over time. We'll see. The last big company to keep in mind is SpaceX. We did a deep dive into this a few weeks ago.
We will link to it. SpaceX is a very complicated IPO because their underlying business isn't very healthy, but they do have of ambition, and I think they've really captivated investors and just supporters who are excited about their mission and the long-term potential. The problem here is if you're an institutional investor again that is looking for maybe more stability and predictability, it's going to be a tough investment, I think, for them.
They're going to find out pretty soon. They are reported to be eyeing an IPO on June 12th, which means that the documents they've filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those will be publicly available shortly, but not quite yet. So, we'll be able to see if everything that's been reported is accurate or not.
But, they are said to be eyeing a valuation anywhere between 1.25 to 1.75 trillion dollars. Absolutely massive, and they have almost no governance, meaning their CEO, Elon Musk, full circle here, would not be able to be fired for basically any reason. They have a very compliant board. And if you want to buy that stock and own it on the public markets, you have to be okay with it.
One of the things that we thought required a little bit more scrutiny though is the fact that due to some of the rule changes at Nasdaq, which again we dived deeper into in this other episode we'll link to, you might end up owning this stock whether you want to or not because it's going to enter the indexes much quicker than is typical for a new company on the public markets.
I think there are a lot of questions around is that fair to public market investors? And is that something that we really want to see over time? We're going to get a lot of chances to evaluate that question in 2026 because the other beneficiaries of that rules change include Anthropic and OpenAI. So again, great for private market investors in those stocks, may or may not make a lot of sense for retail investors and institutional investors who are acquiring these assets on the public markets.
And with that, that's all we have for you today. I'm Netha Bidway, and this is Good Revenue. If you're still with us, hit the subscribe button so you never miss one of our episodes, and we'll be back in your feed in a couple of days. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, leave us a review, subscribe to the show, or check out another episode. We appreciate your support.
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