Anthropic Files Confidentially for IPO at $965 Billion Valuation — Beating OpenAI to Wall Street

Five years ago, Anthropic did not exist. Seven researchers walked out of OpenAI, frustrated with the direction the company was taking on safety, and started something new. Today, that same company has just filed to go public on Wall Street at a valuation of $965 billion — surpassing OpenAI itself. If that number holds at listing, Anthropic would rank among the most valuable companies ever to debut on a public stock exchange.

Anthropic has submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock, potentially leapfrogging longtime rival OpenAI in the race toward a Wall Street debut as soon as this fall. The company kept its statement deliberately brief: "This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said.

That one sentence contains an entire story about money, technology, competition, and speed.

What Is Anthropic and Why Does It Matter?

Anthropic PBC is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, it is the developer of the Claude AI family of large language models. Anthropic's mission emphasizes a safety-focused approach to AI research and development, and it is structured as a public benefit corporation — a for-profit company with a stated commitment to positive public impact.

Anthropic was founded in January 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei along with five other former OpenAI researchers. The reason for the split was concerns about AI safety and alignment at OpenAI. Dario Amodei became CEO, Daniela became President, and they built a company whose entire identity was defined by the idea that making AI safe and making it powerful were not opposites — they were the same goal.

The product they built to prove that point is Claude. What started as a research assistant has become one of the most widely used AI tools in enterprise software. Approximately 70% of Fortune 100 companies now use Claude. Monthly visits to claude.ai reached around 824 million in April 2026, up from 288 million in February. That kind of growth in two months is not normal. It is the kind of number that gets bankers on the phone.

What a Confidential IPO Filing Actually Means

Most people hear "IPO filing" and assume the stock is about to start trading next week. That is not how it works, and the word "confidential" is the key detail here.

Anthropic filed a confidential draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing was made under standard SEC confidential review procedures, which allow late-stage companies to begin the IPO process without immediately disclosing revenue, margins, or risk factors. The company said the proposed offering will depend on market conditions and that share count and price have not been set.

In plain terms: Anthropic has raised its hand and told regulators it intends to go public. The SEC now reviews the paperwork privately. Once that review is complete — and assuming market conditions cooperate — the company can choose to proceed with a public listing. Reports point to a target listing as soon as October 2026, with Anthropic targeting the Nasdaq. But nothing is locked in. The filing is the starting gun, not the finish line.

The $965 billion figure itself comes not from the IPO — which has no price yet — but from the most recent private funding round. Anthropic's most recent fundraising round, a Series H, placed its post-money valuation at approximately $965 billion, a figure that would place any resulting IPO among the largest in market history if maintained.

The Revenue Story Behind the Valuation

A $965 billion valuation is only credible if the underlying business is real. In Anthropic's case, the revenue numbers are striking enough that even skeptics have had to take notice.

Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate surged from $87 million in January 2024 to $30 billion by April 2026 — a pace that CEO Dario Amodei said outstripped the company's own forecasts by a factor of eight. To put that in perspective, most software companies take a decade to reach $1 billion in annual revenue. Anthropic went from $1 billion to $30 billion in roughly 15 months.

The engine behind that growth is a product called Claude Code. Claude Code, the company's agentic AI coding tool launched publicly in mid-2025, has become the fastest-growing product in the company's history — and by several measures, one of the fastest-growing software products ever built.

OpenAI projects $14 billion in losses for 2026. Anthropic projects positive free cash flow by 2027, while OpenAI has pushed its breakeven target to 2030. Anthropic reaches profitability three years before OpenAI, while generating more revenue. That gap — profitable faster, earning more — is exactly the kind of story public market investors want to hear.

How This Compares to OpenAI's Plans

The rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI is the defining competition in AI right now. Both companies are racing toward public markets, and both know that being first matters.

The Anthropic IPO is inseparable from the OpenAI rivalry that has defined the AI industry in 2025 and 2026. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in March 2026 after closing a record $122 billion funding round. Anthropic's subsequent $965 billion Series H valuation in May 2026 pushed it past OpenAI for the first time in the private market.

OpenAI is not far behind. The ChatGPT maker is reportedly preparing its own confidential IPO filing and is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley ahead of a possible fall listing.

The timing game here is real. The company that lists first is likely to capture the largest share of early investor enthusiasm in the AI IPO wave of 2026 — a wave that Goldman Sachs estimates could generate $160 billion in new capital flows. Anthropic just took that lead. For investors, the question is not simply which AI company is better. It is which one gets to set the price, the narrative, and the benchmark — and Anthropic just grabbed that advantage.

Filing first could let Anthropic set the narrative, but it could also give OpenAI a chance to watch how investors react before committing to its own price. There is strategy on both sides of this race.

What It Signals for the Broader AI Industry

The Anthropic IPO is not just a corporate milestone. It is a signal about where the entire AI industry is heading.

Combined, SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI could pull $3 trillion-plus in market value toward public investors in the months ahead. That capital is finite — being early is being positioned. When three companies of this size go public in the same year, it reshapes how ordinary investors can access the AI economy. Until now, the gains from AI's explosive growth have been captured almost entirely by venture capital firms and private investors. A public Anthropic puts some of that access in reach of anyone with a brokerage account.

There are also harder questions that will surface once the S-1 becomes public. The confidential filing means Anthropic has not yet disclosed its audited financials, its cost structure, or its specific risk factors. For investors, the question is no longer whether AI is attracting capital. The question is what public markets will demand once near-trillion-dollar private valuations meet audited financials, capital spending, and margin scrutiny. Revenue growing at 80x is extraordinary. But public markets also want to know how much it costs to generate that revenue, and whether that cost is sustainable.

The Bottom Line

Anthropic went from seven people with a disagreement to the most valuable private AI company on Earth — in five years. The confidential IPO filing is the next logical step in that trajectory, and the timing is no accident. By moving before OpenAI, Anthropic is claiming the first-mover advantage in one of the most anticipated public market events of the decade.

Anthropic, once viewed as an underdog to OpenAI, has vaulted ahead of the ChatGPT maker on multiple fronts — in private valuation, in revenue growth, and now in the race to Wall Street. Whether the $965 billion figure survives contact with public markets remains to be seen. But the company making that bet is not a startup gambling on hype. It is a business growing faster than almost anything the technology industry has ever seen before.