Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, has taken a significant step toward a Wall Street debut. On Monday, the firm confirmed it had submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering (IPO). The move positions Anthropic as a potential first-mover among major generative AI companies seeking public investment.
"This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said in a statement. "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors." The company has not yet specified the number of shares or their price.
Anthropic Could Beat OpenAI to Market
The filing surprised some analysts, who had expected OpenAI to go public first. "I think we were all expecting OpenAI to go first, so it was a little bit surprising," said Patrick Corrigan, a law professor at Notre Dame University who studies IPOs. "Public investors are going to be comparing them roughly around the same time, and so there seems to be a bit of a first-mover’s advantage here."
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders. Both companies, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX (which merged with his AI venture xAI in February), are now expected to become publicly traded. OpenAI last reported a valuation of $852bn in March, while SpaceX was valued at $1.25 trillion after its merger.
Valuation and Revenue Growth
Anthropic recently raised $65bn in private funding, giving it a valuation of $965bn. That figure surpasses OpenAI’s most recently disclosed valuation and makes the five-year-old startup one of the world’s most valuable private companies. The company now reports annualised revenue of $47bn, driven by sales of its Claude technology for coding and other professional tasks.
Claude’s growing popularity has put pressure on OpenAI, despite ChatGPT’s early lead in making generative AI a household name. Last week, Anthropic launched its newest model, Claude Opus 4.8, which it claims outperforms previous versions in coding and professional applications.
IDC analyst Tim Law described the move toward public markets as a "healthy thing" for the AI industry. "We think of these as very mature organisations, but they’ve had to mature in a very short period," he said.
Global IPO Market Shows Strength
Anthropic’s filing comes amid a broader resurgence in global IPO activity. According to KPMG, companies raised $42.6bn through 251 IPOs worldwide in the first quarter of 2026, a 45% increase year-on-year despite fewer deals. The data suggests investors are backing larger listings, with AI and space technology companies expected to drive activity for the rest of the year.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called Anthropic’s move "an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years." He noted that the three major conglomerates—Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX—are all set to go public later this year.
Corrigan drew parallels to the early internet era, when startups rushed to public markets. Some, like Amazon, thrived; others failed during the dot-com crash but left lasting technological change. "Whenever there is speculation, there’s also usually substance and fundamentals," he said. "The question here is whether the price investors are going to end up paying is going to match up to the substance and fundamentals of what AI is really going to do in the real economy and as a business."
IPO Could Test AI Bubble Concerns
Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are all spending heavily without demonstrating sustained profitability, fueling concerns about a potential AI bubble. Law, who experienced the dot-com IPO wave while working for VerticalNet, argued that existing products show a path to profitability and even artificial general intelligence. "There are some sceptics around demand. I thoroughly believe the demand is there and will grow," he said. "I think this funding round may be the thing that enables us to complete the final sprint toward AGI."
For European investors and tech observers, Anthropic’s IPO filing underscores the accelerating competition in generative AI. While the company is U.S.-based, its moves have implications for European startups like Mistral AI, which recently partnered with Airbus and BMW, and for the broader debate on AI regulation and ethics, as seen in discussions at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV.
