Anthropic files confidentially to go public

The frontier AI race just officially pointed its crosshairs at Wall Street.

On Monday, Anthropic, the AI lab behind the Claude model family, announced that it has confidentially filed a draft Form S-1 with the SEC for a proposed IPO of its common stock. While share count and pricing remain unset, the filing gives Anthropic the green light to take its shares public as soon as regulators wrap up review and market conditions permit.

A near-trillion-dollar race to the bell

The move caps a dizzying climb through the private markets.

Just days ago in late May, Anthropic closed a massive $65 billion Series H funding round at an eye-watering $965 billion post-money valuation. That mark more than doubled its $380 billion valuation from February, when it pulled in $30 billion, and pushed Anthropic past OpenAI as the world's most valuable private AI company.

Now, Anthropic is trying to beat its chief rival to the stock ticker. Reports indicate that OpenAI is also prepping its own confidential S-1 filing in the coming weeks, while SpaceX marches forward with a $75 billion listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation.

Until now, retail and public institutional investors looking for AI exposure had to settle for chipmakers like Nvidia or tech titans like Microsoft and Alphabet. Anthropic would represent Wall Street's first pure-play frontier model lab.

Why it matters

The era of frontier AI labs hiding behind private VC megachecks is drawing to a close.

We think Anthropic's timing is sharp. Striking right after securing a near-trillion-dollar valuation lets the company set the narrative and capture public capital before OpenAI hits the market. For investors, it offers the cleanest bet yet on frontier generative intelligence without enterprise software baggage.

Public markets are ruthless about unit economics. As a public benefit corporation, Anthropic has long preached AI safety and long-term AGI governance, but quarterly earnings calls do not care about philosophical manifestos. Investors will closely inspect how much Anthropic pays Amazon and Google for compute, how fast its enterprise API revenue is converting to gross margin, and how long that staggering cash burn can continue. The real test of the AI boom begins the day Claude starts trading on the open market.