OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks Prepare for IPOs Amid Surging AI Investment

Artificial intelligence companies are moving toward what could be a wave of blockbuster Wall Street debuts, with names like OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks drawing the most attention as investors continue to pour money into the sector. The renewed excitement comes alongside fresh signals that the market is still willing to fund AI at extraordinary levels, even as questions grow about costs, margins and how long the spending boom can last.

Several recent reports underscore just how much capital is still flowing into the AI ecosystem. Bloomberg reported that Alphabet is set to participate in a $1 billion California transaction tied to the booming municipal-bond market for prepaid energy, a sign that AI-related infrastructure spending is expanding into unexpected corners of finance. TechCrunch, meanwhile, described Alphabet’s $85 billion stock raise for its AI business as a strong signal that investor appetite for AI remains intense. Bloomberg also reported that the owners of Xnrgy Climate Systems, which makes heating and cooling parts for AI data centers, may be considering a sale that could value the company at up to $10 billion.

The scale of the spending spree is also showing up inside the AI industry itself. In a recent Business Insider report, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said one of the company’s biggest customers is consuming 100 billion tokens a month, and that budgeting for AI has become a “huge issue” for some companies. That is a notable shift from earlier this year, when, according to Altman, cost concerns were not yet central to the conversation. The comment highlights a key tension behind the IPO buzz: demand is surging, but the economics of running frontier AI models remain expensive.

That tension is part of why the coming public-market listings matter so much. Morningstar said OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks are all expected to go public this year at massive valuations, while Renaissance Capital has listed OpenAI among the most anticipated AI IPO candidates and noted a broader roster of private AI companies preparing for the market. If those deals move ahead, they could become a major test of whether public investors will value AI businesses as richly as private markets have done.

The backdrop is a broader capital boom that has already sent AI fundraising to record levels in some markets. HKEX said AI companies drove IPO fundraising in Hong Kong at the start of 2026, with the exchange seeing a strong pipeline of more than 350 companies and multiple AI-related listings across the value chain. That suggests the appetite is not limited to U.S. megacaps; infrastructure providers, applications companies and data-center suppliers are all trying to ride the same wave.

Still, not everyone sees the boom as risk-free. Bloomberg reported that Diameter Capital Partners co-founder Scott Goodwin said the AI-driven capital expenditure rush will eventually ease, but not yet. That view reflects a growing debate on Wall Street about whether the sector is entering a durable buildout phase or inflating a bubble. For now, the answer appears to be that investors are still betting heavily on AI growth, and the biggest names are preparing to take that story directly to the public markets.