Anthropic becomes latest AI company to go public in once in a generation moment for Wall Street

The maker of the popular Claude AI chatbot has announced plans to become a public company.

Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic has taken the first steps to be publicly listed, meaning its shares are traded through a stock exchange and can be bought more easily.

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Such a move, called an initial public offering (IPO), would also mean greater transparency over Anthropic's finances, with the company legally obliged to publish certain financial data. Whether the company is profitable or not will be revealed for the first time.

The move will make for "the most scrutinised public offering in tech history", according to Harrison Rolfes, the senior late-stage company research analyst at financial data and research platform PitchBook.

It comes at a moment when other AI majors, which are core drivers of US economic growth, are eyeing similar moves and marking a once-in-a-generation fundraising opportunity for investors, professional service providers and the corporates themselves.

Anthropic joins Elon Musk's AI, space and internet-providing company SpaceX in announcing plans to IPO, which is set to be the largest in Wall Street history.

The maker of AI chatbot ChatGPT, OpenAI, is also reportedly looking to go public, as it is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the billions poured into adopting and investing in AI technology.

By going public, companies can become more valuable, have greater access to funding and grow even larger.

Lots unknown

A statement from Anthropic said it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for an IPO with the US market watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

"This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said.

"The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."

It added that the number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set.

That means the size and timing of the IPO have not been set.

What is Anthropic?

The company is only five years old, having been founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees.

It's headed by Dario Amodei, who, along with his sister Daniela Amodei, left OpenAI over ethical and safety concerns.

But Anthropic has since overtaken OpenAI, becoming more valuable through its latest funding round, which saw it valued at $900bn, according to reports.

Anthropic was in the headlines in March as it took on the US Department of Defence and was blacklisted by the Trump administration over its refusal to allow unfettered access to its technology for military purposes.

It's also the creator of a large language model called Mythos, which is viewed by cyber security experts ​as posing significant challenges to the banking industry ‌and its legacy technology systems due to its ability to find vulnerabilities, prompting a series of warnings from regulators and ​policymakers around the world.

(c) Sky News 2026: Anthropic becomes latest AI company to go public in once in a generation moment for Wall Stree