Anthropic Has Filed a Confidential S-1 and Is Targeting an October IPO
The company behind Claude is aiming for an October debut with an investor target of two trillion dollars — while OpenAI waits, and the company's own numbers rest on projections and unnamed sources.
Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1, 2026, and is targeting an October listing. That is according to 24/7 Wall St., which also reports that the company behind the Claude chatbot is expected to raise more than 60 billion dollars, with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters. On September 28, Reuters described the company's path toward what could be the first-ever listing of a frontier AI lab — the kind of research-and-industry hybrid known in English as a "frontier lab."
The valuations circulating measure different things and must not be conflated: trading in shares on the secondary market suggests a valuation of around 1.2 trillion dollars, according to 24/7 Wall St., while investors, according to the same source, are aiming for 2 trillion dollars at listing — a level that would make the debut the largest IPO in history, surpassing SpaceX's June 2026 listing at 1.77 trillion dollars. For comparison, the private post-money valuation from the May round was 965 billion dollars. Where the listing actually lands will be determined by demand in the book-building process.
The vision and the numbers behind it
The prospectus that Reuters has reviewed paints, according to the agency, a sweeping picture in which AI will transform the world economy more profoundly than industrialization, electrification and the internet. That is the company's own presentation in a sales document — not an independent assessment — and should be read for what it is: the argument a company makes to justify a historic valuation.
The numerical foundation behind the vision is nonetheless partly concrete. In May 2026, Anthropic announced that it had raised 65 billion dollars in a funding round that gave a post-money valuation of 965 billion dollars. By the end of July, the annual revenue run rate — how much the company earns if the latest month is multiplied by twelve — had, according to Reuters, citing a source, passed 65 billion dollars. Reuters further reports that Anthropic projects revenue of roughly 190–200 billion dollars in 2028. Both of the latter figures require caveats: the run rate rests on an unnamed source, and the 2028 figure is the company's own projection, not a result.
24/7 Wall St. cites preliminary company figures reportedly showing positive adjusted operating income in the second quarter of 2026, following a loss of around 5.6 billion dollars in 2024. These figures have not been confirmed by other reporting and should be treated with caution.
The conflicts public investors must weigh
The IPO does not arrive in a vacuum. Reuters' timeline describes several legal and political conflicts that will follow the company onto the stock exchange:
- The authors' lawsuit. In July 2026, a federal judge in San Francisco approved Anthropic's landmark 1.5-billion-dollar settlement with a group of authors who accused the company of misusing their books to train Claude. The settlement resolves that lawsuit, but the case has shown how large copyright claims over training data can become.
- Round Hill Music. In August 2026, the music rights company Round Hill Music sued both Anthropic and Suno — a new front in the ongoing conflict over copyright in music training data.
- The Pentagon conflict. In February 2026, President Trump directed the administration to halt work with Anthropic, and the Pentagon signaled that the company would be declared a supply-chain risk. In March, Anthropic responded by suing to block placement on the national security blacklist — a high-stakes conflict with the US military over usage restrictions on the technology.
How these conflicts develop — particularly the confrontation with the Pentagon — could affect both the company's public image and potentially government contracts.
The contrast with OpenAI
While Anthropic accelerates toward the stock exchange, its competitor OpenAI has chosen to wait. OpenAI chief Sam Altman explained why to Fortune's editor Alyson Shontell, in quotes carried by TheWrap (translated from English): "I actually think that, given everything going on with safety, right now would be an inadvisable time to go public, and we feel no pressure to do so."
Analyst Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies points, in TheWrap's analysis, to another reading of Anthropic's position: Claude has long been seen as the "responsible" AI company, and a proactive move to dampen doom-mongering may have seemed necessary with a listing later this year at a dizzying target valuation of 2 trillion dollars. In other words: the safety profile is not an obstacle to the listing, but part of the very product investors are buying.
Open questions
Several things remain unconfirmed. The October timing is a target, not a guaranteed date — no primary S-1 is publicly available yet, since confidential filings only become visible in a draft prospectus shortly before listing. The valuations diverge because they measure different things: 965 billion dollars was the May round's private valuation, 1.2 trillion dollars is secondary-market pricing, and 2 trillion dollars is the investors' ambition.
And then there is the underlying question: Altman argues that the safety situation argues against listing now, while Milanesi reads Anthropic's safety profile as an asset in the pursuit of a record valuation. Whether Anthropic succeeds in convincing public investors that the company can deliver the prospectus's vision — while managing copyright claims and an ongoing conflict with the US military — will determine whether the October target holds, and what level the listing ultimately lands on.
Sources:
- Reuters (via MSN): https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/anthropics-path-from-ai-startup-to-industry-defining-ipo/ar-AA2d94ot?ocid=BingNewsVerp
- 24/7 Wall St. (via MSN): https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/2-trillion-anthropic-ipo-is-a-go-here-s-why-i-won-t-touch-it/ar-AA28vEb4?ocid=BingNewsVerp
- TheWrap: https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/tech/anthropic-openai-ai-slowdown-reaction-analysis/