The biggest IPO of the year may be upon us.
Anthropic PBC, the AI company behind the popular Claude LLM, has confidentially filed to go public.
On Monday, the company announced that it has filed a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review,” a company statement said. “The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors.”
With all of the fervor around AI and LLMs, the filing sets the Claude maker up for a massive stock listing, potentially the biggest of the year so far.
Notably, it also gives Anthropic the jump on its chief rival, OpenAI, which is also said to be planning an IPO this year, and which enjoyed so-called first mover advantage after it launched ChatGPT to the public in 2022.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group from OpenAI that defected and founded their own company, citing concerns about OpenAI’s direction.
The announcement on Monday from Anthropic does not lay out a timeline, estimated listing date, or number of shares to be offered.
Anthropic has also seen its valuation balloon to $965 billion, following a $65 billion Series H funding round announced last week.
To demonstrate its money-printing abilities, it announced that it has crossed a revenue run rate of $47 billion, an increase from $10 billion the year prior.
In late March, OpenAI announced that its valuation was $852 billion.
Tech IPO market poised to heat up in 2026
The IPO market could see serious fireworks in the weeks and months ahead.
In addition to the potential Anthropic and OpenAI listings, Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is also preparing for an IPO—one that could raise more than $75 billion at a valuation of between $1.75 and $2 trillion.
The IPO market has generally been slower compared to last year. During Q1 2026, the total number of IPOs globally tallied 232, according to data from EY. Comparatively, the first quarter of 2025 saw a total of 300 IPOs, but the pace picked up over the course of the year, and there ended up being 1,331 for 2025 overall.
