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You've probably used Claude to draft an email, debug a script, or automate half your job this month. Turns out, enough other people have too that Anthropic might be about to pull off the biggest stock market debut ever.
Here's the deal: Anthropic's bankers have told investors the company could raise "more than $100 billion" when it goes public, according to the New York Times. That would put its value near $2 trillion, more than double the $965 billion it was worth after its last private funding round in June.
Here's what happened
- Anthropic's IPO could "match or beat" SpaceX's June debut, which raised $85.7 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation (the largest IPO ever)
- Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are reportedly leading the offering, with a listing possible as soon as October
- The company could reveal its public filing paperwork in the coming weeks, with shares possibly listing this autumn
- Only Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia have ever crossed the $2 trillion valuation mark
- Anthropic would beat OpenAI to the public markets; OpenAI isn't planning to list until 2027
Why this matters
Claude Code, Anthropic's coding assistant, has become one of its most popular products and helped push the company's projected annual revenue to $47 billion. That's a five-year-old startup founded by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, both former OpenAI executives, betting its safety-focused approach to AI can out-earn (and now out-IPO) the company they left.
An IPO this size would also settle an argument that's been simmering all year: whether the "safety-first" lab can actually out-compete the "move fast" one. So far, the money says yes.
Our take
The hype has a couple of asterisks.
Anthropic has struggled to get enough chips and servers to keep up with demand, and in March, the Trump administration cut off its Defense Department contracts entirely after Anthropic refused to give the military unrestricted access to its models (Anthropic called the move "unconstitutional retaliation").
A record-breaking IPO and a fight with your own government's biggest customer don't usually show up in the same earnings call.
Anthropic's prospectus should tell us which story is closer to true.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on our sister publication, The Neuron.