It’s software vs. AI. And software is losing.

The funny thing is that Wall Street is worried about artificial intelligence on so many levels. And yet the AI frontrunners—most notably Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX—just keep getting bigger and bigger, threatening to crowd out all the other companies that aspire to go public this year.

For example, Anthropic, developer of the Claude large language model, is now worth $380 billion after announcing a new funding round of $30 billion on Thursday.

“Claude is increasingly becoming more critical to how businesses work,” Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s CFO, said in a statement. “This fundraising reflects the incredible demand we are seeing from these customers, and we will use this investment to continue building the enterprise-grade products and models they have come to depend on.”

Anthropic, which touched off last week’s market meltdown with advancements to Claude, ranks as one of the top initial public offerings in the pipeline for this year.

Two others are OpenAI, the parent of ChatGPT, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is now an AI play after merging with Musk’s xAI startup.

Open AI is valued at $500 billion and SpaceX’s value is $1.25 trillion because of the xAI deal. That puts SpaceX on track to be the biggest IPO ever.

Though Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX haven’t officially filed for IPOs, the mere possibility that they will is having an impact on other companies going public this year.

It’s been a mixed bag for Wall Street debuts since 2026 kicked off.

Once Upon a Farm, an organic food brand, and Bob’s Discount Furniture, biotech Veradermics, and electrical equipment company Forgent Power Solutions rose from their IPO prices. But satellite company York Space Systems, online life insurer Ethos Technologies, and digital asset custody firm BitGo sank.

Many of last year’s IPOs, such as CoreWeave and Circle Internet Group, “benefited from pent-up demand and greater retail participation,”said Renaissance Capital, an IPO research firm, adding that “now, the generalists are gone, and mixed trading has turned this into a stock picker’s market.”

And many investors seem to be waiting to “pick” SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic once they go public.

Because SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic could be among the biggest IPOs ever, they could “vacuum a lot of liquidity out of the market,” Vineet Jain, founder of privately held AI software startup Egnyte, told Barron’s.

Put another way, those massive IPOs would reduce investor demand for smaller and mid-sized private companies looking to go public.

Already, funds that own large stakes in SpaceX and Anthropic are attracting investors. Examples are the interval fund Ark Venture, from Cathie Wood, and The Private Shares Fund, which have large stakes in SpaceX, as well as closed-end fund Destiny Tech100, which has a stake in both Anthropic and SpaceX.

“At some point, the IPO floodgates are really going to open,” Kevin Moss, portfolio manager with The Private Shares Fund, told Barron’s.

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, which are collectively worth more than $2 trillion, could lead the way.