Anthropic files for US stock market debut as AI valuations near $1 trillion
Anthropic, the AI company behind chatbot Claude, has filed paperwork to go public on US stock exchanges this year. The filing comes as the five-year-old firm's valuation recently topped $965 billion in private fundraising, ahead of rival OpenAI's $852 billion valuation.
The company did not disclose the price or number of shares it plans to offer. Going public would let investors buy and sell Anthropic stock directly, rather than through private markets.
Anthropic's IPO plans arrive alongside SpaceX's expected debut, setting up what analysts call the largest concentration of pre-IPO capital ever brought to market simultaneously. The two listings will test whether public investors will pay the valuations AI companies command in private markets.
A test case for AI profitability
Tineke Frikkee, senior fund manager at W1M, said she would scrutinize Anthropic's IPO prospectus-the detailed document companies must publish before listing-to find hard evidence of profitability. "No doubt it'll be a multi-hundred pages document, but that's what we'll be looking for," she said.
Anthropic has told investors it expects to turn a profit in the first half of this year, driven by growing sales of Claude and related services. Neither SpaceX nor OpenAI are currently profitable.
Harrison Rolfes, a research analyst at Pitchbook, said Anthropic's IPO "will be the most scrutinized public offering in tech history." Investors will examine business margins, sales, and profitability to determine whether AI company valuations and operating costs make financial sense.
Who goes first matters
OpenAI is also considering a public listing this year. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, told CNBC on Monday that his company intends to go public but "in no rush to do so."
Analysts disagree on whether moving first or second carries more risk. Troy Hooper, a leader of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, said the first mover has an advantage. "The first mover has a real chance to define how public markets value generative AI, setting up the yardstick that investors will use to measure everyone else," he said.
Sana Kharegani, chief strategy officer of AI firm Era 4, saw risk in Anthropic's approach. "What we are going to get is a precedent - a gauntlet laid down for metrics that might matter," she said. "But if things don't go exactly as planned, you're leaving the door for others to come after you."
Government tensions and rising AI spending
Anthropic clashed with the Trump administration last year over a $200 million Department of Defense contract. The DoD wanted language allowing government agencies to use Claude for "any lawful use," which Anthropic feared could include mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons systems.
After Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei made his concerns public, President Donald Trump said the US would "never do business with [Anthropic] again" and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth banned federal agencies from using Claude. Anthropic sued the government. Recent signs suggest tensions have cooled, though the lawsuit continues.
The dispute has not deterred other customers. Anthropic says Claude sales have grown significantly despite the government ban.
Meanwhile, Google's parent company Alphabet announced plans to raise $80 billion for AI spending. Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the announcement signals "a clear sign that the AI arms race is moving into a more capital-hungry phase."
The stakes
Rolfes offered a stark assessment of what's at stake. "The 2026 window either becomes the most consequential IPO cycle since the dot-com era or the most expensive lesson in narrative-versus-fundamentals that public markets have ever taught," he said.
For finance professionals, the Anthropic IPO will offer rare visibility into how generative AI and LLM companies actually perform financially. Unlike most AI for Finance applications, this is a direct test of whether the technology itself-not just its applications-can generate sustainable profits at scale.
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