OpenAI and Anthropic both announced acquisitions on the same day, causing dual IPO anxiety.

By: blockbeats|2026/04/03 18:00:08
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On April 2, OpenAI and Anthropic each announced an acquisition. OpenAI acquired the tech livestream show TBPN, while Anthropic spent around $4 billion in stock to acquire the AI biotech startup Coefficient Bio. Both companies are aiming for a late 2026 IPO, but their shopping lists point to vastly different anxieties.

15 vs 3. That's the number of acquisitions OpenAI and Anthropic have respectively completed in the past three years.

OpenAI and Anthropic both announced acquisitions on the same day, causing dual IPO anxiety.

According to Crunchbase data, since 2023, OpenAI has completed 15 acquisitions spanning hardware, enterprise services, development tools, healthcare, security, media, and consumer sectors. They completed 6 deals in just the first three months of 2026. The disclosed deal value total surpasses $7.7 billion, with the largest being the May 2025 acquisition of AI hardware company io founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive for $6.5 billion.

Anthropic has only made 3 acquisitions. In December 2025, they acquired the JavaScript runtime Bun to complement Claude Code's underlying infrastructure. According to an official statement from Anthropic, the Bun acquisition coincided with Claude Code's annualized revenue reaching $1 billion. In February 2026, they acquired the computer use agent startup Vercept, strengthening Claude's autonomous operation capabilities. On April 2, they acquired Coefficient Bio, entering the life science research pipeline. Each deal precisely aligns with a technical layer of the Claude product stack.

It's worth noting that OpenAI had one failed deal. In May 2025, OpenAI had reached a $3 billion acquisition agreement with the code editor Windsurf (formerly Codeium). However, according to IT Pro, due to IP clauses in Microsoft contracts, OpenAI couldn't protect Windsurf's tech from being accessed by Microsoft, leading to the deal falling apart in July. This failed deal also reflects a structural constraint of OpenAI's "breadth acquisition" model.

This discrepancy in density is not coincidental. It reflects the vastly different revenue structures of the two companies and the resulting distinct anxieties.

Revenue Structure Determines Acquisition Direction

According to Sacra's estimate, OpenAI had an annualized revenue of around $25 billion in February 2026, with about sixty percent coming from the consumer side (ChatGPT subscriptions) and forty percent from the enterprise side. The foundational revenue for OpenAI comes from its 15.5 million paid users. For a company about to IPO, a high percentage of revenue from the consumer side means that public sentiment directly affects the valuation narrative.

This explains why OpenAI acquired TBPN. According to Axios, TBPN is a daily live tech talk show, generating $5 million in advertising revenue in 2025 and targeting over $30 million in 2026. Following the acquisition, OpenAI retained its editorial independence while hiring former Postmates executive Dylan Abruscato to lead ad monetization. The rationale for buying a tech podcast lies not in its revenue but in its ability to sustainably influence public discourse on AI topics.

Anthropic's anxiety direction is entirely different. According to Ramp data cited by Sherwood News, Anthropic currently holds 73% of the first-time AI procurement enterprise customer share, up from 50% just 10 weeks ago. As reported by SaaStr, around 80% of Anthropic's revenue comes from the enterprise side. For enterprise customers, selecting an AI vendor is a high switching cost decision. Anthropic's IPO narrative needs to demonstrate that these enterprise customers will not churn.

Three Strategic Moves in Six Months

The Coefficient Bio acquisition was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Placing it in the context of Anthropic's actions over the past six months reveals a clear logic.

In October 2025, Anthropic launched Claude for Life Sciences, integrating with research databases like PubMed and UniProt to enable Claude to assist with literature reviews and experimental design. In January 2026, at the JPM26 conference, Claude for Healthcare was announced, obtaining HIPAA compliance certification and officially entering the healthcare system. On April 2nd, Coefficient Bio was acquired, gaining end-to-end AI capabilities for drug discovery.

Over the course of six months, from the tool access layer to the compliance access layer, and then to the R&D pipeline layer. According to Newcomer, Coefficient Bio was founded just 8 months ago, with fewer than 10 employees, and is held around 50% by venture capital firm Dimension. Anthropic completed the acquisition of Claude for about 400 million USD in stock, with Dimension stating in its LP letter that the investment's IRR reached 38,513%.

This number itself indicates that Anthropic did not buy a company's revenue or product, but rather a team plus an industry entry point. According to Anthropic's official statement and RD World, pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, AbbVie, Genmab, and others are already using Claude's life science tools. The case of Novo Nordisk is particularly noteworthy, as the processing time for clinical research documents has been reduced from over 10 weeks to 10 minutes.

Two Balance Sheets, One Countdown

According to WinBuzzer and The Tech Portal, Anthropic has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to lead the underwriting and aims to go public as early as October 2026, with a financing size exceeding 600 billion USD. OpenAI is targeting Q4 2026 or Q1 2027 for a valuation approaching 1 trillion USD. According to Tom Tunguz's analysis, if OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX were to IPO in the same year, these three alone could absorb over 3 trillion USD of market liquidity.

Both companies are making final strategic adjustments ahead of the IPO. CNBC reported that OpenAI CEO Fidji Simo internally announced the discontinuation of Sora, Atlas browser, hardware projects, and instant checkout functionality, stating that the company is "like entering a red alert" and needs to focus on enterprise and agency products. Anthropic's path is to continue to deepen its penetration into vertical industries such as life sciences, using industry switching costs to lock in enterprise customers.

FinancialContent reported that OpenAI's board is concerned that if Anthropic goes public first, it will absorb the long-held enthusiasm of retail investors for AI. The two companies have a valuation difference of more than 2x, but they are competing for the money of the same group of investors. Two acquisitions on the same day, one buying a narrative machine, the other buying an industry entry point.

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