Anthropic races toward a Wall Street debut with a confidential SEC filing

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is moving toward going public on Wall Street, the latest chapter in its meteoric rise from a little-known research laboratory to one of the leading AI companies valued at $965 billion.

Anthropic said Monday it has submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock.

"This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said in a brief statement. "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."

The company said it hasn't decided on the number or price of shares to be offered.

Anthropic said last week it had raised $65 billion in private funding that will push its valuation to $965 billion, a whopping number that makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world's most valuable startups.

The announcement vaulted Anthropic ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, both in market value and in reported revenue. Anthropic said it's now making annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its technology to people and organizations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf.

Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk's rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three have been losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said Anthropic's move "represents a major step for Anthropic to get ahead of OpenAI" and "an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years, with these three major conglomerates set to go public later this year." Anthropic also last week launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models.

Claude's growing popularity has left OpenAI playing catch-up despite its early lead in making ChatGPT a household name that sparked a commercial AI boom.

OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. It has not yet reported filing initial IPO paperwork with the SEC.

SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk's xAI in February. Musk recently announced plans for one of the biggest stock sales ever and will be able to pitch the offering to investors as soon as this week.