Anthropic is lining up investor meetings ahead of a potential initial public offering later this year, with bankers scheduling sessions between executives and prospective investors, according to a person familiar with the plans. The meetings signal that preparations are advancing after the artificial intelligence startup confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
The sessions, first reported by Bloomberg, suggest a debut could come as soon as October, though the timing remains fluid. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase are leading the offering, the person said. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment.
The company closed what the source describes as a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation in May, pushing it above OpenAI's $852 billion valuation for the first time. The round underscores the scale of capital flowing into frontier AI models.
An Anthropic listing would follow June's SpaceX IPO, as characterized in the source, and further open public markets to companies at the center of the AI boom after years in which the industry's largest names remained private while raising hundreds of billions of dollars. Anthropic appears poised to beat rival OpenAI to the public markets; OpenAI also confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC in June but has disclosed no further details.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of executives and researchers who left OpenAI over concerns about its direction. The startup has found early enterprise traction, driven largely by its coding assistant, Claude Code. However, the source notes that the AI spending boom has fueled a resurgence in profit for Wall Street firms as they seek to satisfy investors clamoring for ways to fund the buildout and invest in or hedge aspects of the theme, a dynamic that could amplify both demand and scrutiny.
Investors will now watch for the formal roadshow, the size and pricing of the offering, and whether Anthropic's enterprise-focused revenue trajectory can sustain a valuation near the trillion-dollar mark in a public market that has grown more selective about AI exposure.