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Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley Compete for Lead Underwriter Role in OpenAI and Anthropic IPO, Potential Revenue Exceeding $7 BillionBlockBeats News, June 10th, according to
Fortune
report, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are competing to be the lead underwriters for OpenAI and Anthropic's future IPO. Previously, Goldman Sachs has secured the lead underwriter position for the SpaceX IPO, scheduled for June 12th. The IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to raise at least $60 billion, totaling over $120 billion. University of Florida IPO expert Jay Ritter stated that the lead underwriter will determine how much IPO stock each fund receives, potentially providing significantly higher returns than other underwriters.
Ritter mentioned that institutional investors often pay substantial "soft dollars" to the lead underwriter to receive more IPO allocations, where trading commissions exceed the actual execution costs. If it is still uncertain whether Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley will secure the lead underwriting position for OpenAI and Anthropic, funds may allocate more trading commissions to both investment banks simultaneously to increase their chances of allocation.
Using the SpaceX IPO as an example, if the fundraising reaches $860 billion, the underwriting fee would be around $600 million. However, if the first-day share price rises by 20%, IPO investors' unrealized gains would exceed $17 billion. Ritter estimates that at least 30% of this amount, possibly around $5 billion, could flow back to the investment banks in the form of soft dollars, significantly surpassing the underwriting fee itself.
If both OpenAI and Anthropic companies rise by 20% on their debut days, investors' unrealized gains would reach $24 billion. Calculating based on the same ratio, the investment banks could receive over $7 billion in soft dollars, with most flowing to the lead underwriters. Currently, OpenAI and Anthropic have both secretly filed draft registration statements but have not yet confirmed their listing dates.
