A week after Anthropic filed to go public, OpenAI made the same move - confidentially, via a blog post. The company behind ChatGPT, most recently valued at 852 billion dollars, submitted a draft filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The race between the two biggest names in artificial intelligence (AI) is now moving from the models to Wall Street.

"Confidential filing" sounds mysterious, but it's simple: the company begins preparations without publicly disclosing its finances and risks, leaving the share price for later. OpenAI itself admits this is a "complex set of trade-offs" and that the move gives it the option to go public sooner if that proves best. Translation: we're keeping a door open, we're not promising a date.

Behind the philosophical statements about how "AI should benefit all of humanity" sit more brutal numbers. OpenAI recently fell short on new users and revenue, and chief financial officer Sarah Friar openly voiced concern about the enormous data-centre costs. In March the company raised 122 billion dollars - the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history - but the projections say that even in 2028 it will spend more than it earns, with a loss of around 85 billion dollars that year.

The comparison with its rival stings. Anthropic jumped to a trillion dollars on the secondary market, overtaking OpenAI. According to David Shapiro, founder of OpenVC, Anthropic's growth this year reached 123 percent, against just 11.3 percent at OpenAI. Investors nonetheless treat both as "dual winners" in the large-language-model race - which is a nice way of saying nobody wants to miss the next giant.

And there's a third player in line: SpaceX, expected to debut at 1.75 trillion dollars. Three tech giants going public within a few months - a concentration not seen since the dot-com boom. And here's the trap: whoever goes first will be first to catch the ever-pricier AI capital, while the one who waits risks inheriting someone else's prices.

Behind the euphoria hang shadows the investors will have to look at - lawsuits claiming the chatbot harmed children, unresolved governance questions ever since the day the board removed, then immediately reinstated, Sam Altman. When a company's value surpasses entire national economies, the question isn't whether it will go public, but who'll be left to pay when the music stops.