Anthropic Files for IPO as AI Race Heats Up

AI Giant Moves Toward Public Markets

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, said Monday it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is a step toward the maker of the chatbot Claude launching on the stock market, probably at a valuation of more than $1 trillion, seeking to enter the U.S. stock market as early as this fall.

Last week, Anthropic announced that it raised $65 billion in a recent funding round, bringing its valuation to $965 billion. The San-Francisco-based company also said it's now booking annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its Claude subscriptions to businesses and individuals who use it to write code and perform work and personal tasks. The company's rapid growth has been remarkable, considering it was founded just five years ago by former OpenAI executives.

"OpenAI and Anthropic are in a race to go public before capital runs out," said analyst Gil Luria from the investment firm DA Davidson. "The other reason for Anthropic to try to beat OpenAI out to the public market is that they will get to set the agenda for how a frontier model reports financials and do so in a way that is favourable to their financial model." Anthropic's IPO is expected to be among a trio of high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, along with rocket company SpaceX and OpenAI, which started the AI boom in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot.

Pentagon Controversy Clouds Public Debut

Despite its financial success, Anthropic faces significant challenges stemming from a bitter dispute with the Pentagon. He captured the nation's attention a few months ago after refusing to allow the Defense Department to use Anthropic's AI technology to power fully autonomous weapons and perform mass surveillance of Americans. President Trump later ordered government agencies to stop working with the AI company, canceling more than $200 million in federal contracts. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also labeled Anthropic "a supply chain risk to national security."

Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July and was the first AI lab to deploy its technology across the agency's classified networks. But as the company began negotiating Claude's deployment on the DOD's GenAI.mil AI platform in September, talks stalled over how the military could use the models. The DOD wanted Anthropic to grant the Pentagon unfettered access to its models across all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.

Earlier in March, the Department of Defense designated Anthropic a so-called supply chain risk, meaning that use of the company's technology purportedly threatens U.S. national security. The label, if allowed to continue, will require defense contractors, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir, to certify that they do not use Claude in their work with the military. The designation has forced many defense technology companies to abandon Claude and switch to competing AI models.

Market Impact and Competition

Anthropic's rapid rise in early 2026 rattled markets, triggering sharp sell-offs in software and IT stocks as investors worried its increasingly autonomous AI tools could upend traditional business models and accelerate disruption across industries. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fuelling concerns of an AI bubble. 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.

An Anthropic debut would be a major boost for the long-sluggish IPO market, though experts and bankers warn an offering of such scale could drain liquidity and investor attention from smaller listings. "We believe this represents 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, but this has turned into a race to reach public markets over the coming months," Wedbush Securities analysts said in a research note Monday.

Future Outlook

The timing of Anthropic's IPO filing reflects both opportunity and urgency in the AI sector. While the company has achieved extraordinary growth and valuation milestones, its ongoing legal battles with the government create uncertainty for potential investors. The outcome of these disputes could significantly impact how AI companies interact with federal agencies and defense contractors going forward.

The trio of IPOs will test investors' appetite for artificial intelligence, a fast-growing sector that has helped fuel the stock market's recent rally. For Anthropic, successfully navigating both the public markets and its government relations will determine whether it can maintain its position as a leading AI company while staying true to its stated principles around responsible AI development. The company's ability to balance growth, profitability, and ethical considerations will likely shape the broader conversation about AI governance in both private and public sectors.