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American artificial intelligence giant Anthropic said Monday it has filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), edging ahead of rival OpenAI in a closely watched race to reach public markets.
The makers behind the Claude chatbot gave few details in the announcement Monday, but said it had submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO of its common stock.
The move sets up an early test of whether investor appetite for artificial intelligence, which has fueled lofty private valuations and talk of potential trillion-dollar listings, will hold up under public scrutiny, and which company gets to set the template for how the fast-growing sector is valued.
Anthropic, which is headquartered in California, didn’t disclose the size or the terms of the offering. It last raised $65 billion US at a post-money valuation of $965 billion US in late May, putting it ahead of rival OpenAI.
The listing would represent one of the most consequential stock market debuts in years, potentially reshaping benchmark indexes, investor flows and the broader narrative driving U.S. equities.
Reuters reported in May that OpenAI was also preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. IPO in the coming weeks.
That follows SpaceX’s mega-IPO, which is on course to rewrite the record books as the Elon Musk-led company pursues a $75-billion US offering at a $1.75-trillion US valuation and could begin trading within two weeks.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has revealed plans to go public with what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in Wall Street history. As the majority shareholder, the world’s richest man could, through the offering, become the first-ever trillionaire.
Confidential submissions let companies advance IPO preparations while shielding sensitive financial details from rivals and the public.
“Filing shortly after SpaceX allows Anthropic to capitalize on strong investor interest in AI and growth stocks while the window remains favourable,” said Kat Liu, vice president at IPO research firm IPOX.
“Anthropic’s valuation ambitions appear far less aggressive in comparison [to SpaceX] than they might have looked in isolation.”
Race for AI dominance
OpenAI and Anthropic have become the face of the AI boom that has redrawn corporate strategies, sparked a global arms race for computing power and talent, and turned AI-linked companies into some of the market’s most richly valued firms.
“For OpenAI, the conventional read is that Anthropic just seized the narrative advantage by filing first,” said Harrison Rolfes, a senior analyst at PitchBook.
“The unconventional read is that OpenAI got the better end of this: Anthropic just volunteered to absorb all the disclosure risk first, and OpenAI now has a free option to watch how institutional investors react to audited frontier AI financials before committing to its own price.”
Front Burner32:33Inside OpenAI’s zealous pursuit of AI dominance
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a CNBC interview that he is not focused on the timing of a potential initial public offering for the ChatGPT maker, following news of Anthropic’s confidential filing.
He said the company will go public when it makes sense to do so.
Anthropic’s valuation has more than doubled from $380 billion US in February, when it raised $30 billion US in a funding round.
The company’s rapid rise in early 2026 rattled markets, triggering sharp selloffs in software and IT stocks as investors worried its increasingly autonomous AI tools could upend traditional business models and accelerate disruption across industries.
Its latest funding round drew backing from a mix of Silicon Valley and Wall Street investors, including Blackstone, Brookfield, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, General Catalyst and Insight Partners.
A market milestone
As a slew of big listings races toward public markets, companies from SpaceX to AI giants are competing for a finite pool of investor capital.
Analysts, including D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria, said the two companies were racing to go public before capital on Wall Street ran out.
Canada’s privacy czars determined OpenAI did not adhere to Canadian privacy laws when training its popular AI tool ChatGPT. Although investigators say the company has since addressed the issues, OpenAI has not faced any penalties for the privacy breaches it committed. Federal Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne joins Power & Politics to discuss.
“The combined demand for capital from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic will be so considerable that it is likely to create disruptions in the capital markets, so going early will be a great advantage,” Luria said.
At close to a $1-trillion US valuation, Anthropic would vault into the top tier of the S&P 500, alongside a handful of elite companies that dominate global equity markets.
The IPO market has regained momentum in recent weeks, with companies raising $87.5 billion US through May 26, the highest year-to-date global total since 2021, according to Dealogic data.
Several sizable U.S. IPOs are also set to hit the market later this week, including Honeywell-backed quantum computing firm Quantinuum, Blackstone-backed Liftoff and gas engine manufacturer Innio.
