Anthropic Files to Go Public in Huge Year For IPOs --- Company recently emerged as a front-runner in the AI wars as it gained ground

“Anthropic, the artificial intelligence lab recently valued at nearly $1 trillion, said Monday it has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, setting up a blockbuster year for IPOs.

 

The filing could put the company behind the Claude AI model on a path to go public this fall.

 

Elon Musk's SpaceX is preparing to stage what is likely to be the largest IPO ever next week. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, was preparing to submit its own IPO filing imminently.

 

Banks have told Anthropic and OpenAI that whichever makes it to market first will get to define the new industry and have first dibs on the large pools of cash eager to back new AI companies. If both file initial paperwork with regulators around the same time, either would still have a chance at staging an offering before the other.

 

Anthropic said in a blog post that its plans will depend on market conditions and other factors. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a CNBC appearance Monday that he didn't think there was a race to go public. "We will do it when it makes sense," he said.

 

The year could end up the biggest ever for money raised through IPOs if Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX all make their debuts. SpaceX is aiming to raise as much as $80 billion or more in an offering next week. It had a valuation of $1.25 trillion after its combination with Musk's AI-company xAI, and could see its valuation rise further.

 

Anthropic has recently emerged as a front-runner in the AI wars after a period of staggering growth.

 

The company, founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees including Anthropic's now-CEO Dario Amodei, was once a scrappy underdog that investors were uncertain could pull ahead of the ChatGPT maker. That changed with the release of hit products like its AI-coding tool Claude Code, which became a viral hit across Silicon Valley and helped position Anthropic as a real competitor to OpenAI.

 

Anthropic's momentum accelerated late last year, around the debut of Claude Opus 4.5, a powerful AI model with strong coding abilities. Over the holidays, engineers and AI enthusiasts flocked to the tool, and many said they became "Claude-pilled." The release of Claude Cowork, a tool for non-engineers, catapulted Anthropic's growth further.

 

The startup's focus on business users helped it gain ground. While OpenAI broadened its business, launching the video generator Sora, which it later shut down, and building a robotics team, Anthropic focused on developing AI tools for enterprise customers.

 

In May, Anthropic raised $65 billion in new funding from investors including Greenoaks, Dragoneer, Altimeter Capital and Sequoia Capital, in a round that valued the company at $965 billion. At the same time, the company said its revenue run-rate had surpassed $47 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.

 

Because Anthropic filed confidentially, as is now customary, most investors will have to wait until closer to the IPO to see details of the company's business, including its finances. The confidential process allows regulators and companies to engage in a back-and-forth dialogue about disclosures as they finalize the prospectus for the stock offering.

 

The AI race is far from over and Anthropic has its own challenges. The company has dealt with computing constraints that have caused outages and forced it to throttle users. To alleviate those concerns, the company has signed compute agreements.

 

Plus, some companies that urged employees to integrate AI tools into their work are now trying to be more judicious with their spending after that exuberance led to massive computing bills. Such a pullback by U.S. corporations could be a challenge for the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI.

 

Anthropic is also in the throes of a messy spat with the Trump administration. The company filed in March lawsuits against the Trump administration after it designated Anthropic a Defense Department supply-chain risk and ordered agencies to stop using its models.

 

A federal appeals court in April declined to suspend part of the Pentagon's designation. Separately, a federal judge in California granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction, stopping some of the administration's actions. The government is appealing.” [1]

 

1. Anthropic Files to Go Public in Huge Year For IPOs --- Company recently emerged as a front-runner in the AI wars as it gained ground. Clark, Kate; Driebusch, Corrie.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 June 2026: A1.