Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are organizing separate banking teams to work on potential stock market debuts by OpenAI and Anthropic. The move aims to prevent sensitive information from crossing between the two direct competitors. The two banks reportedly expect to be involved with both transactions while keeping the coverage groups walled off from one another.

The setup departs from typical IPO playbooks, in which a lead bank usually avoids representing two rivals going to market simultaneously. The banks are assigning different bankers to each mandate, even as both offerings are expected to include broad syndicates with multiple firms.

Historical Context

During the 2019 IPOs of Lyft and Uber, the work was divided among different lead underwriters rather than shared by the same top banks. JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, and Jefferies led Lyft's deal, while Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America handled Uber's IPO.

IPO Timeline and Challenges

Both OpenAI and Anthropic submitted confidential IPO filings earlier in June, which can keep documents out of public view while companies gauge timing. Neither company has set a definitive timeline for its IPO debut. The earliest scenario discussed was August, though expectations have shifted toward a period after early September.

OpenAI has suggested a public offering may not be imminent because it wants to complete certain priorities while staying private. "We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best," a statement read.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is contending with policy and regulatory complications, including U.S. government limits on foreign access to newer models and an unresolved disagreement tied to a Pentagon designation.

OpenAI has hired former White House artificial intelligence adviser Dean Ball to lead a new unit focused on shaping frontier AI policy. Ball will join the company on July 6 as the leader of the Strategic Futures team, reporting to Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. The new unit is tasked with addressing matters such as catastrophic risk, recursive self-improvement, labor market impact, and the relationship between frontier labs, governments, and society.

The Strategic Futures team will handle both public-facing policy proposals and internal governance within the lab. Ball will work closely with the technical staff, the Preparedness team, the legal team, policy staff from the National Security and Global Affairs teams, and the company's executive leadership. In a blog post on Substack, Ball outlined the unit's mandate to navigate the complex intersection of AI technology and public policy.

Ball previously helped draft the White House's AI Action Plan, which was released last summer, and departed the administration shortly after its release. He is currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and will retain this role while at OpenAI. In March, Ball was also named a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Before his government service, he worked at George Mason University's Mercatus Center and held a program manager role at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

The appointment comes as OpenAI significantly expands its workforce. The company has hired 40 employees from Salesforce since the start of the year and plans to double its headcount from 4,500 to 8,000 by the end of 2026. Other recent hires include Clint Gibler, who joined the technical staff to work with Michael Aiello, head of product for cyber. Former Ironclad CEO Jason Boehmig will lead the product team for the legal industry, and former Salesforce AgentExchange CEO Brian Landsman has been appointed vice president of global partnerships.

Recent Hires at OpenAI

Denise Dresser, who led Salesforce's Slack business as CEO, departed in December to join OpenAI as chief revenue officer. The company's aggressive hiring spree underscores its ambition to scale operations and strengthen its policy and product capabilities amid rapid growth in the AI sector.