Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is moving toward going public on Wall Street, the latest chapter from a little-known research laboratory to one of the leading AI companies valued at $965 billion.
Anthropic said Monday it has submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock.
鈥淭his gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review,鈥� Anthropic said in a brief statement. 鈥淭he proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors.鈥�
The company said it hasn’t decided on the number or price of shares to be offered.
Anthropic said last week it had raised $65 billion in private funding that will push its valuation to $965 billion, a whopping number that makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world鈥檚 most valuable startups.
Anthropic now has vaulted ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker , not only in market value and reported revenue but also on the path to becoming a publicly traded company.
鈥淚 think we were all expecting OpenAI to go first, so it was a little bit surprising,鈥� said Patrick Corrigan, a law professor at Notre Dame University who studies IPOs. 鈥淧ublic investors are going to be comparing them roughly around the same time, and so there seems to be a bit of a first movers鈥� advantage here.鈥�
Anthropic said it鈥檚 now making annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its technology to people and organizations using and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf.
Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk鈥檚 rocket and AI company , are all expected to become publicly traded. All three have been losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said Anthropic鈥檚 move marks a major step for the company to get ahead of OpenAI and “an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years, with these three major conglomerates set to go public later this year.鈥�
Corrigan said the race between Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX resembles in some ways the rush by startups to go public in the early internet era. Some of those companies 鈥� like Amazon 鈥� did well, and others infamously failed during the dot-com crash but still left new technology that changed society and work life.
鈥淲henever there is speculation, there鈥檚 also usually substance and fundamentals,鈥� Corrigan said. 鈥淭he 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.鈥�
Claude鈥檚 growing popularity has left OpenAI playing catch-up despite its early lead in making ChatGPT a household name that sparked a commercial AI boom. Anthropic also last week launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models.
OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. It has not yet reported filing initial IPO paperwork with the SEC.
SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk鈥檚 xAI in February. Musk recently announced plans for one of the biggest stock sales ever and will be able to pitch the offering to investors as soon as this week.
IDC analyst Tim Law said it will be a 鈥渉ealthy thing鈥� for the AI industry when these companies are required to provide quarterly earnings reports and disclose some of their technology investments.
鈥淲e think of these as very mature organizations, but they鈥檝e had to mature in a very short period,鈥� he said.
As for bubble concerns, Law, who rode the dot-com IPO wave while working for internet company VerticalNet in the early part of the century, said there’s evidence from these AI startups’ existing products to show they are on a path not just to profitability but to artificial general intelligence, technology that does work as well as or better than humans.
鈥淭here are some skeptics around demand. I thoroughly believe the demand is there and will grow,鈥� Law said. 鈥淚 think this funding round may be the thing that enables us to complete the final sprint toward AGI.鈥�
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