Anthropic, the high-profile AI research lab behind the popular Claude chatbot ecosystem, has officially taken its tentative first step toward becoming a public company. In a move that surprised many industry onlookers, the startup announced it has confidentially submitted a draft Form S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Outrunning the competition
With this surprising move, Anthropic has successfully managed to jump out ahead of its primary rival, OpenAI. ChatGPT’s parent company is still quietly preparing its own confidential paperwork. So, the latest development puts Anthropic right at the forefront of a white-hot IPO season. It lands alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which filed its own prospectus and is actively preparing for a massive investor roadshow.
Filing confidentially is a clever business play. It allows Anthropic to iron out internal logistics and undergo thorough regulatory reviews entirely behind closed doors, protecting its sensitive corporate metrics and financial risks from the public eye until a final launch date approaches.
The exact number of shares and pricing benchmarks remain under wraps. However, the company noted that the final initial public offering will inevitably depend on broader market conditions.
Eye-popping growth numbers
Founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI researchers who left over disagreements regarding company direction, Anthropic was long considered a scrappy underdog. But a blockbuster 2026 has completely rewritten that narrative. The company recently announced that its revenue run-rate has jumped to a staggering $47 billion, up from the $9 billion of the end of last year. Much of this is thanks to the success of developer tools such as Claude Code.
Just last week, the tech giant closed a massive $65 billion Series H funding round backed by heavyweights like Sequoia Capital and Capital Group. This funding pushed Anthropic’s private valuation to a breathtaking $965 billion. The figure officially edges out OpenAI’s last reported valuation of $852 billion.
Surviving the massive computing cash crunch
Despite these dizzying figures, the shift to public markets highlights a harsh reality: building frontier AI models is an incredibly capital-intensive endeavor. The sheer amount of electricity, data centers, and advanced silicon required to train and run large language models creates a constant cash crunch. For context, a peek at recent infrastructure agreements shows that Anthropic is paying rival SpaceX a staggering $1.25 billion per month. This number is just to access compute power at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis.
Transitioning to the public market opens up a massive pool of liquidity from institutional investors, like pension funds, that private rounds simply cannot match. Some market critics warn that a public listing might eventually expose poor underlying economics or trigger a tech bubble correction. Still, Anthropic is banking on its strong enterprise momentum. Much of this business hype stems from Claude Mythos Preview, an advanced model with powerful cybersecurity capabilities that has captivated private sector clients and government officials alike. If the SEC review moves smoothly, everyday retail traders could see Anthropic shares hitting the stock market in a matter of months.
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