Realtors say expected OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs are helping drive pandemic expats back into a brutal SF rental market. Neither company has filed a public S-1, set a price, or committed to a date.

San Francisco realtors have a new line in their pitch to pandemic expats trying to move back: get in before the AI money lands. The San Francisco Standard reported Saturday that former residents are flying in weekly, downsizing, and calling agents daily in a scramble for housing, with Compass agent Michael Bellings saying clients regret leaving "probably on a daily basis." Among the drivers he and the paper name: return-to-office mandates, an improved civic mood under Mayor Daniel Lurie — and "hype and pressure from the expected IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic."

Here is the part the hype skips. Neither company has actually filed to go public.

Both have only confidentially submitted draft S-1 registration statements — Anthropic on June 1, OpenAI about a week later, per each company's own announcement. A confidential draft is not a public filing: there is no S-1 on EDGAR, no audited financials, no risk factors, no cap table, no price range, no ticker, and no exchange. Anthropic's own statement is explicit: "The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said a listing "may be a while," and CFO Sarah Friar has publicly cautioned the company isn't ready for public-market scrutiny. Reporting on OpenAI's timing ranges from September 2026 to a slip into 2027 — all leaks, none confirmed by the company.

The valuations fueling the anxiety are private marks, not market prices: Anthropic at roughly $965 billion off its ~$65 billion Series H (closed May 28), OpenAI at $852 billion off a March round. Secondary desks like Forge quote both near or above those figures, but secondary trades are not a lock-up-expired payday — they're a thin, pre-liquidity market. OpenAI, for its part, is still unprofitable, reportedly burning more than a dollar for every dollar it earns.

None of that makes the return fake. The population rebound is real — Censai tracked 434 people moving in from Seattle alone in 2025 — and so are the rents: Zumper put the median one-bedroom at $4,060 in July, up about 22% year over year. (The market fell roughly 25% during the doom-loop years before recovering, not "doubled.") But a housing market frantically bidding against an IPO windfall should note that the windfall hasn't priced. What to watch: the first public S-1 to hit EDGAR — with the financials and lock-up terms attached — and whether the scramble outlasts the wait.