TL;DR
Two private companies building the most powerful AI systems in the world are now valued, on paper, in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars or more, and one of them may soon be owned in part by anyone with a brokerage account. Anthropic is reportedly expected to list its shares in mid-November, and OpenAI is reportedly rushing to raise about $30 billion before that happens. If the listing goes ahead, ordinary investors get their first direct stake in a frontier AI lab, and the public filings that come with it will show, for the first time, how these companies actually count their money. That matters beyond Wall Street: the labs' ability to keep raising this kind of money is what pays for the next generations of AI.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 5 milestones, starting with "Anthropic shares begin trading on a public exchange by 2026"; and every source.