Public market exposure to artificial intelligence has historically been limited to a few key players. Microsoft invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, integrating its systems into Azure and Office. Similarly, Alphabet and Amazon backed Anthropic with multi-billion-dollar commitments to incorporate its models into their cloud ecosystems. Nvidia has also played a central role, with its data center segment increasingly driven by AI training and inference workloads. This structure defined the "AI trade" as ownership of the enabling systems rather than the models themselves.

That dynamic is now shifting as OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidential preparations for public listings. SpaceX is also set to IPO this month. This pipeline represents a significant transition, moving from indirect exposure through hyperscalers to direct ownership of frontier model developers and adjacent infrastructure platforms.

The scale of these private companies highlights the potential market impact. Anthropic was recently valued at $965 billion, with an annualized revenue run rate approaching $50 billion driven by enterprise adoption of its Claude models. OpenAI reports billions in annualized revenue and products reaching hundreds of millions of weekly users. SpaceX, valued between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in private markets, views artificial intelligence as its largest growth opportunity.

These listings could introduce several trillion dollars of new equity to public markets. Beyond size, the shift will force financial disclosure that private funding rounds obscured. Investors will gain visibility into how effectively AI companies convert compute expenditure into revenue and their dependence on hyperscaler distribution.

Public listings will also expose the circular nature of the AI ecosystem to quarterly scrutiny. Hyperscalers fund model developers, who drive demand for compute, which in turn fuels hyperscaler revenue. The listings will redefine the AI trade, shifting the investor question from which layer benefits most to whether model developers can sustain the economics of the infrastructure they created.

OpenAI has acquired cloud-based developer Ona to power Codex with secure, customer-controlled cloud infrastructure for long-running AI agents. The ChatGPT parent company said the integration will allow Codex to complete tasks that could take hours or days in minutes, while also making it easier for organizations to deploy agents in production with stronger visibility and oversight. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and the companies will continue operating independently until the deal is completed.

Ona, which has helped shift software development workflows into cloud-based environments and supports more than 2 million developers, already shares customers with OpenAI. The acquisition comes as Codex expands beyond its roots as a coding assistant into a broader platform for research, analysis, automation and software development. OpenAI said Codex now has more than 5 million weekly users, a 400% increase from earlier this year.

Strategic Integration

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT), said organizations should be able to use persistent, agent-based systems with confidence, knowing those agents run within environments that satisfy their security, governance, and operational standards. The company added that this requires clear control over deployment environments, system access, credential boundaries, activity logging, and the review process for how work is executed and approved.

Leadership Perspective

"Agents need more than intelligence; they need a trusted workspace," Ona co-founder and Chief Executive Johannes Landgraf said in a statement. "We built Ona to give agents cloud environments with the context, control and collaboration enterprises require. Joining OpenAI lets us bring that foundation into Codex, helping organizations deploy agents with confidence and giving humans more agency over their work."

Future Operations

After the acquisition closes, Ona’s team will join OpenAI and work alongside the Codex group to build secure, persistent execution capabilities for enterprise customers. Together, the two companies aim to help engineering teams take on long-running software tasks more safely and effectively across the full lifecycle—from running tests and fixing issues to modernizing applications, patching vulnerabilities, and managing complex workflows over time.