Anthropic is postponing the schedule for its IPO by several weeks. According to consistent reports from the news agency Reuters, the prospectus for the initial listing will only be published at the end of September, and the marketing of the shares will begin no earlier than mid-October – about a month later than planned at the end of August. The company is sticking to a potential valuation of up to two trillion dollars.
Prospectus and marketing delayed by weeks
As recently as the end of August, it was stated that Anthropic intended to publish the prospectus shortly after September 7 and to carry out the initial listing at the end of September or early October. According to the new schedule, both are delayed: the prospectus is now expected to be available only at the end of September, and the actual marketing of the shares to institutional investors will begin no earlier than mid-October. The IPO itself is reportedly scheduled for the days just before the U.S. congressional elections in November. It is still unclear whether the investor day originally planned for mid-September will also be postponed. Neither Anthropic nor the involved banks provided reasons for the delay. In IPOs of this magnitude, schedules are regularly postponed, for example due to extensive documentation requirements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the final composition of the banking consortium, or ongoing financing discussions in the background. Anthropic itself did not comment on its IPO plans when asked. The company had already begun initial investor meetings in the summer without committing to a fixed listing date at this early stage.
Credit line and record valuation remain despite delays
In parallel to the IPO, Anthropic is negotiating a revolving credit line of 15 billion dollars, which is intended to provide the company with additional financial flexibility independent of the proceeds from the issuance. According to consistent reports, the banks Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are working on the listing. For Anthropic, debt of this magnitude is nothing new: just in August, Google linked loans of 200 billion dollars to Anthropic’s computing chips, secured through a specially created special purpose vehicle. The recurring need for fresh debt underscores how capital-intensive the expansion of computing power for large language models has become. The postponement of the schedule has not yet changed the fundamental target valuation: investors are still calculating with up to two trillion dollars – more than double the last private valuation of 965 billion dollars in May 2026. Six investors surveyed by Anthropic had already mentioned this target mark in August, with one even considering three trillion dollars possible. For comparison: SpaceX raised around 86 billion dollars in its IPO in June 2026, making it the largest IPO of the year so far. If Anthropic surpasses this volume as expected, its own listing would not only be the largest of the year so far but also a signal to rival OpenAI, which has not yet announced its own listing date.
It will be crucial whether the prospectus provides clarity on the final valuation at the end of September or whether the numbers continue to fluctuate until the marketing phase in mid-October. If the listing occurs as planned just before the U.S. congressional elections in November, the largest AI IPO to date would face a politically charged market environment – a test of how resilient investor interest in AI stocks beyond the established tech giants actually is.
