Anthropic announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed initial public offering (IPO).
The filing came just after the Claude chatbot creator closed a US $65 billion Series H funding round. The round propelled Anthropic’s post-money valuation to US $965 billion, led by major institutional investors including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, alongside public market investors like Capitla Group and Baillie Gifford.
With this valuation, Anthropic has officially leapfrogged its primary rival, OpenAI, which was last valued at US $852 billion, to become the most valuable AI startup in the world.
A trillion-dollar race to Wall Street
By utilizing a confidential filing, Anthropic can keep its sensitive financial details and internal operations out of the public eye while the SEC reviews the paperwork. The company noted in a brief statement that the IPO “will depend on market conditions and other factors,” adding that the number of shares and price target have not yet been set. However, it is being anticipated that the listing will comfortably value the firm well worth of US $1 trillion.
The move sets up an unprecedented race to the public markets between Silicon Valley’s apex AI labs and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is also targeting a US $1.75 trillion listing this summer. According to some public reports, OpenAI is also preparing its own confidential filing to follow Anthropic imminently.
The financial momentum
Anthropic which was once viewed as a research heavy underdog to OpenAI has seen its commercial trajectory explode over the last year. The shift has been largely driven by its enterprise-first strategy and the massive adoption of its developer-centric tools, particularly its advanced coding assistant, Claude Code, and the next-generation Mythos model.
According to financial data tracked by Bloomberg, Anthropic’s annualized run-rate revenue crossed US $47 billion last month, a fivefold increase since the start of the year. The company is projected to post US $10.9 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, putting it on pace for its first profitable quarter.
Navigating the capital binge
In terms to counter severe computing constraints, Anthropic has recently locked in long-term infrastructure partnerships with Google, Amazon and Broadcom. Notably, the firm also signed a massive multi-year deal to lease computing capacity from Elon Musk’s Colossus data centre campuses.
While Anthropic faces near-term headwinds including an ongoing legal and regulatory dispute with the U.S. Pentagon over model access restrictions, it is being anticipated that this S-1 filing will be a grand opening of the tech IPO floodgates. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are reportedly expected to underwrite the historic offering, which could land on Wall Street as early as October.