Anthropic has reportedly begun investor meetings for a potential IPO, according to a report by Bloomberg News. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase are leading the banking consortium, with a listing possibly following as early as October 2026. This would allow Anthropic to go public ahead of OpenAI and the Chinese rival DeepSeek.
Banking Consortium Prepares Investor Talks
The three banks are expected to organize discussions between Anthropic and potential investors in the coming weeks. A company spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, according to Bloomberg. Anthropic had already confidentially submitted an S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in early June. A confidential filing is a common first step before a public offering, which other large tech companies have also chosen before their IPOs – it allows financial figures to be kept under wraps initially and disclosed only shortly before the actual roadshow. However, the application does not commit a company to a specific IPO date. The targeted October date is considered ambitious even for such a well-capitalized company. Typically, several months elapse between initial investor meetings and the actual trading start for comparable tech IPOs for price discovery, roadshow, and regulatory review by the SEC. If the timeline holds, it would be one of the largest tech IPOs in recent years and an early test of how investors price high private AI valuations in public markets.
Series H Round Raises Valuation Above OpenAI Level
The valuation of $965 billion stems from Anthropic’s own announcement of the Series H funding round on May 28. The company raised $65 billion at that time, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. Co-lead investors included Capital Group, Coatue, GIC, and Temasek, with additional participants being Blackstone, Fidelity, General Catalyst, and T. Rowe Price. According to Anthropic, Amazon contributed $5 billion to a larger hyperscaler investment totaling $15 billion. As strategic infrastructure partners, Anthropic also mentions memory chip manufacturers Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix, which are expected to reserve capacities for future computing needs. CFO Krishna Rao stated that Claude is “increasingly indispensable” for the company’s growing customer base. According to the company, the round is intended to finance security research, computing capacity, and the scaling of the product range. With the new valuation, Anthropic surpassed OpenAI for the first time in this metric – a turning point in the race between the two largest U.S. AI labs and a signal of how strongly investors continue to bet on Claude’s growth.
Anthropic Aims to Get Ahead of Rivals OpenAI and DeepSeek
OpenAI reportedly postponed its own IPO target to 2027, while the Chinese company DeepSeek could prepare a filing later this year. DeepSeek is currently estimated by market observers to have an annualized revenue of $400 to $500 million – an independently unverified figure, but a fraction of what Anthropic generates with Claude and the associated programming tools. An early IPO is intended to secure additional capital for the high computing costs behind current AI models: training and operating large language models consume billions in chips, data centers, and energy before any revenue is generated. External funding has become a structural necessity for frontier labs, as training and inference costs grow faster than the revenues of providers. An early IPO also gives Anthropic an advantage in accessing public capital and bond markets while competitors are still waiting for their own prospectuses. Analysts view the timing as a signal to customers and talent that Anthropic remains financially equipped for the long term.
It will be crucial whether Anthropic actually meets the October deadline or if the process is delayed like with other AI IPOs. A public trading start would subject Anthropic to broad disclosure obligations for the first time – including detailed revenue and loss figures that have only been available to investors so far. For the rest of the industry, a successful Anthropic IPO would also serve as a test case for whether investors support current AI valuations beyond private funding rounds.
