OpenAI Files for IPO While Apple Ditches Intel Macs

Here's a number worth sitting with: OpenAI, the company that put AI on everyone's lips, is currently valued at less than its biggest rival. Anthropic just crossed a $965 billion post-money valuation after its latest fundraise, edging past OpenAI's $852 billion. And now both companies are sprinting toward the same finish line — a public stock market listing.

OpenAI confirmed Monday that it has confidentially submitted a Form S-1 to the SEC, following Anthropic's identical move earlier this month. A confidential filing is essentially a soft launch for an IPO — the paperwork is in, but the juicy details like executive pay, risk factors, and full financials stay locked away until the company decides to go fully public with the document. It's a way to test the regulatory waters without fully exposing yourself to public scrutiny.

The timing matters a lot here. This isn't just two AI companies doing routine corporate housekeeping. It's a legitimately competitive race, and the outcome will shape how Wall Street values the entire AI sector for years. Whichever company debuts first — and at a stronger valuation — gets to set the narrative.

But OpenAI's road to the public markets hasn't been smooth. Reports have surfaced that CFO Sarah Friar has been notably less enthusiastic about the accelerated timeline than CEO Sam Altman. The concerns aren't trivial: missed revenue targets, slower-than-expected user growth, and a compute spending commitment that raises eyebrows. OpenAI originally floated plans to spend $1.4 trillion on compute infrastructure — a figure so large that Altman reportedly got defensive when pressed on it publicly. The company later revised that number down to $600 billion through 2030, which is still an almost incomprehensible amount of money to commit before you've ever sold a share on the open market.

Then there's the SpaceX factor. Elon Musk's rocket company is targeting a June 12 IPO that could raise $80 billion and potentially become the largest public debut in history. OpenAI's listing will inevitably be measured against that spectacle — especially given the tangled web connecting these companies. SpaceX acquired OpenAI competitor xAI, and separately inked a deal with Anthropic worth $15 billion a year for data center access. Meanwhile, the legal dust from the Musk v. Altman trial has barely settled.

What makes this moment genuinely fascinating is that we're watching the AI industry grow up in real time. A year ago, these were private companies burning venture capital and making grand promises. Now they're filing paperwork with the SEC, hiring investor relations teams, and preparing to answer to shareholders every quarter. The freewheeling startup era of AI is ending. The era of quarterly earnings calls is beginning.

Whether investors will treat OpenAI like a transformational technology platform or an extremely expensive bet on future revenue remains the central question. The S-1, when it goes public, will be one of the most-read documents in recent Wall Street history.

If you bought a Mac in 2019 or 2020 — maybe a souped-up Intel MacBook Pro that cost you north of two thousand dollars — Apple just told you that your machine's days of getting the latest operating system are officially over. macOS 27 Golden Gate, announced at this year's WWDC, requires Apple Silicon. No exceptions, no workarounds that will realistically hold up.

This isn't a surprise exactly — Apple telegraphed this move last year — but the finality of it still stings for a meaningful chunk of Mac owners. The cutoff lands on the M1 chip as the minimum baseline, which means any Mac built before late 2020 is now in the legacy category. Intel machines running macOS 26 Tahoe can expect security patches and Safari updates for roughly two more years after Golden Gate ships, and machines on macOS 15 Sequoia get one additional year of updates. After that, you're on your own.

Apple has done this before. When it moved from PowerPC chips to Intel back in the mid-2000s, it used the Snow Leopard release to strip out most of the old architecture code. The same playbook is running here. By gutting the Intel compatibility layer from macOS 27, Apple makes it functionally impossible — not just unsupported, but actually impossible — for tools like the popular OpenCore Legacy Patcher to keep older machines running new software. The workaround community is hitting a hard wall this time.

The strategic logic for Apple is airtight. Apple Silicon has been a genuine engineering triumph — faster, more power-efficient, and tightly integrated with the software in ways Intel chips simply never were. Carrying legacy Intel code through every future release creates technical debt and limits what engineers can build. At some point, you have to cut the cord.

But the timing does raise a legitimate consumer question. Someone who bought a high-end Intel Mac in early 2020 spent serious money on hardware that's now being retired after roughly six years of software support. That's not outrageous by industry standards, but it's a shorter runway than many users expected when they made those purchases.

There's also a two-tier situation emerging even within Apple Silicon. The new on-device AI features Apple demonstrated at WWDC — the more capable Apple Intelligence models — will require an M3 chip or newer, plus at least 12GB of RAM. Basic Apple Intelligence functions will still work on M1 devices and machines with 8GB of RAM, but the full experience is being gated behind newer hardware. It's a subtle but real nudge toward upgrading.

Developer betas for macOS 27 Golden Gate are available now. Public betas follow in July, with the full release landing in the fall. If you're on Intel, this is the last ride.