Anthropic is arranging meetings between its executives and prospective investors ahead of a potential initial public offering later this year, according to reporting from Bloomberg citing people familiar with the plans.
The banks leading the offering, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, are scheduling the meetings in the coming weeks to gauge investor appetite before a formal roadshow and share sale. The AI company could debut as soon as October, though the timing could change. Anthropic confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1 but has not disclosed a listing date, and a spokesperson declined to comment.
The investor meetings, sometimes called “testing the waters,” are a standard step after a confidential filing, and they suggest preparations are advancing rather than confirming a listing. Several caveats are worth stressing: Bloomberg’s language is that Anthropic is “considering” an IPO “as soon as October,” all of which remains subject to market conditions and internal decisions the company has not publicly confirmed.
Anthropic was valued at roughly $965 billion following a $65 billion funding round in May, which pushed it above OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation for the first time, though some secondary-market trades have implied a valuation above $1 trillion. Reported figures put its annualized revenue run rate in the tens of billions, growth driven substantially by demand for its Claude Code coding assistant.
A fall listing would carry competitive significance. It would put Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which had once targeted a 2026 debut but has reportedly pushed its plans to 2027, and ahead of the Chinese lab DeepSeek, which is at an earlier stage of its own IPO preparations.
Being first could be an advantage if enthusiasm for AI stocks later cools, letting Anthropic raise capital while the window is open. The offering would follow a wave of AI-linked debuts, including SpaceX’s record $75 billion IPO in June and memory-chip maker SK Hynix’s $26.5 billion US listing, both tied to AI infrastructure demand. IPO activity has surged, with US listings raising about $227.5 billion so far this year, the highest annual haul since 2021 excluding blank-check vehicles.
The Safety Moat Narrative
Much of the coverage frames Anthropic reaching the market first as a vindication of its origins. The company was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and executives who left over disagreements about direction, and it built its brand on AI safety, a focus long seen as the more cautious and less commercial path.
Its enterprise traction, particularly in coding, suggests that positioning became a go-to-market strength rather than a constraint, as businesses gravitated to a vendor emphasizing reliability and trust. That is the narrative Anthropic will likely carry into investor meetings. It should be read as the bull case its backers, which include Google and Amazon, will make, not as a settled verdict.
The IPO’s Real Test
The harder question is whether public markets will support a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Private investors and public shareholders scrutinize companies very differently, and Anthropic, like its peers, is spending enormously on computing while pursuing rapid revenue growth, a combination that invites questions about the path to profitability.
The debut also lands amid genuine market unease, with the “Magnificent Seven” having shed trillions in value this year on doubts about whether AI spending will pay off, and memory stocks recently tipping into bear-market territory.
Anthropic faces its own specific risks too, including policy headwinds over international model access after the government briefly restricted its Fable and Mythos models. Reaching the market first is an achievement, but it also means Anthropic will be the first frontier lab to test how public investors actually value a company at the center of the AI boom.
