By Jules Rimmer

Going public would bring a whole host of benefits to the AI ecosystem, says Deutsche Bank

OpenAI's Sam Altman (left) and Anthropic's Dario Amodei

News the U.S. government has lifted export controls on Anthropic's most powerful artificial-intelligence models puts the company back on track to go forward with a critical initial public offering.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on two of Anthropic's most high-profile products, its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, thereby ending a month-long dispute. The news was announced Wednesday in postings on X by Anthropic's co-founder and chief executive, Dario Amodei and the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

While the market sell-off in June, rather than the standoff with the government, probably did more to dampen expectations for the mega-cap IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI later this year, this removal of restrictions may reignite investor optimism for the prospects of both.

The delays in selling the state-of-the-art models abroad came at a time just when the industry became aware of the dramatic progress being made by Chinese open-source models like Zhipu's GLM 5.2.

Investors may now feel the probability of Anthropic proceeding with its IPO this year is increasing. Polymarket odds show a 76% likelihood of it happening. OpenAI's by contrast is just 24%. (Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch.)

Both have been touted with valuations north of $1 trillion after they confidentially filed their intentions last month. Deutsche Bank strategist Adrian Cox identifies a whole host of companies in the space are also awaiting their opportunity to go public, like Databricks, Glean and Vanta.

Polymarket odds on going public this year

The chief benefits that Cox sees the listings bringing are transparency, funding and accountability and at the same time, providing investors with "a pure-play benchmark enabling them to value the likely winners and losers of a revolutionary technology."

The industry is approaching what Cox calls "a moment of truth," as stratospheric valuations collide with ballooning capex and slower-than-expected adoption of the technology. If these two AI giants cannot access public markets for equity this could significantly impinge on their future growth prospects - and that of the whole AI boom, says Cox.

The disclosure around the IPO process will finally shed light on the business models of frontier model makers, allowing an accurate assessment of profitability and the returns on the capex. In turn, Cox believes this would make funding that capital investment easier and unlock new ways to finance expansion.

Liquid, publicly-traded stock will allow these companies to attract talent with more immediate payoffs via stock options, rather than waiting around for long periods in illiquid assets, he added.

-Jules Rimmer

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