Anthropic and OpenAI plan IPOs and push for AI safety regulator

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 28, 2026, 16:20 UTC

On September 27, 2026, reporting emerged that both Anthropic and OpenAI are pursuing initial public offerings, with the two companies effectively racing each other toward public markets. Simultaneously, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are working together to establish a self-regulatory body modeled on FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that oversees broker-dealers in the United States. The FINRA model is industry-funded and industry-staffed but carries formal authority delegated by government, and the AI companies appear to be proposing something along those lines. GE Vernova, a power infrastructure company, has been identified as a likely financial beneficiary of whichever IPO succeeds, given the energy demands that large AI operations require.

The two developments sit uncomfortably close together and that proximity is what gives this story its weight. Companies seeking public investment must attract retail and institutional shareholders, which creates pressure to project both growth and responsibility. A self-regulatory body, shaped from within the industry, would let the same companies that profit from AI expansion write the initial rulebook before Congress or federal agencies do. The genuine dispute is whether that arrangement represents responsible industry leadership or a strategic move to preempt stricter external oversight while capitalizing on public markets at the same time.

The anti-AI camp is treating the combination with open suspicion. The Associated Press framed the core tension directly, asking what these companies stand to gain by sounding safety alarms while simultaneously seeking to control how safety is governed. The account ogcanada.bsky.social characterized the broader situation as an American AI bubble approaching a breaking point, suggesting that the IPO push and the regulatory maneuvering together signal fragility rather than confidence. The pro-AI camp has not yet published reactions to this specific story, though it would typically argue that industry-led self-regulation is faster and more technically informed than government rulemaking, and that IPOs democratize ownership of transformative technology. The middle ground camp has also not weighed in yet, but would be expected to ask whether the proposed self-regulatory body would have genuine enforcement power or serve mainly as a lobbying shield.

The details most worth watching are the formal structure and membership rules of the proposed self-regulatory body, any IPO filings or valuation disclosures from either Anthropic or OpenAI, and whether legislators respond to the FINRA proposal by accelerating their own federal AI legislation.