Anthropic filed paperwork on Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering.
In doing so, Anthropic, which produces the large language model Claude, edged ahead in its fierce competition against rival OpenAI. Analysts have argued that being first to go public could be decisive because investors may not have the appetite for two major AI IPOs at once.
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The announcement is nonbinding, meaning that Anthropic could still back out while the SEC completes its review. Anthropic’s filing begins the SEC process, though it does not set a concrete timeline.
The number of shares to be offered and the price at which those shares will be offered have yet to be set, according to the company’s press release.
“The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors,” the statement read.
The company announced last week that it raised $65 billion in Series H funding as part of a round led by the firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. Series H rounds are late-stage opportunities for venture capitalists to invest in mature companies, often before those companies go public.
Anthropic’s announcement gave the company an expected valuation of $965 billion. A public offering would give Anthropic a cash infusion that would continue funding its research and infrastructure blitz.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI employees, led by brother and sister Dario and Daniela Amodei. Anthropic bills itself as an “AI safety and research company.” The San Francisco firm states that its goal is to build AI systems that are “reliable, interpretable, and steerable.”
To that end, Anthropic is currently embroiled in a dispute with the Department of War, which alleges that the company is unwilling to offer its services for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. CEO Dario Amodei defended his company’s history of partnership with the department in a February statement, though stated that it “cannot in good conscience accede” to the department’s demands.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social the following day. “Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”
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In a March filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, government lawyers argued that the company represented an “unacceptable risk to national security.”
Anthropic’s filing comes shortly before AI rival SpaceX’s hotly anticipated June 12 IPO.
