The artificial intelligence race is entering a new high-stakes chapter on Wall Street, as leading AI developer Anthropic has announced plans to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) on U.S. stock markets later this year.
In an official statement released Monday, the San Francisco-based company confirmed it has submitted confidential regulatory paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pave the way for its public debut. The creator of the widely used large language model chatbot Claude noted that details including the per-share offering price and total number of shares available for purchase remain undecided at this preliminary stage.
Founded only five years ago by CEO Dario Amodei and a small group of fellow former OpenAI executives, Anthropic has emerged as one of the most valuable private AI companies in the world. Its latest private funding round valued the firm at more than $965 billion, pushing it past longtime competitor OpenAI, which carries a most recent private valuation of $852 billion. Amodei launched Anthropic after departing OpenAI years ago over strategic disagreements with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and the two companies have since grown into bitter rivals competing for both consumer users and lucrative enterprise clients, as they roll out comparable generative AI technologies.
Anthropic’s planned IPO comes hot on the heels of similarly public plans from SpaceX, the aerospace firm led by high-profile entrepreneur Elon Musk. Together, the two high-value, high-growth offerings are widely expected to serve as a critical market test of whether investor enthusiasm for the generative AI boom matches the sky-high private market valuations that AI startups have commanded in recent years. After a multi-year stretch of booming investment in AI innovation that sent private valuations soaring, public markets will now judge whether these unprofitable, growth-focused companies can live up to lofty investor expectations.