Anthropic Files Confidential IPO Paperwork Ahead of OpenAI

Anthropic has confidentially filed draft paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), moving ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to become the first major frontier AI company to go public.

According to CNBC and Reuters on Sunday, Anthropic submitted a confidential draft registration statement for an IPO to the SEC. The filing, known as a confidential S-1 submission, allows regulators to review the documents privately before requesting revisions. Financial statements, profit structures and risk disclosures remain unavailable to investors at this stage.

Dario Amodei, Anthropic's co-founder and chief executive officer, told CNBC that the company has now secured "the option to go public once SEC review is completed." The move effectively positions Anthropic to launch an IPO quickly if market conditions remain favorable.

Preparations for an IPO had surfaced repeatedly earlier this year, but the latest filing comes immediately after Anthropic completed its Series H funding round, pushing its valuation to about $965 billion. The timing is widely interpreted as an effort to capitalize on surging investor enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Investor interest has also intensified after Anthropic signaled the possibility of achieving the AI model industry's first quarterly profit during the second quarter.

Anthropic recently raised about $65 billion in fresh capital, securing a valuation of approximately $965 billion. That represents more than double the $380 billion valuation assigned during its February Series G funding round, when it raised $30 billion. If maintained through listing, Anthropic would rank among the highest-valued startups in history, with some forecasts suggesting its valuation could surpass $1 trillion at IPO.

The valuation also exceeds OpenAI's latest estimated valuation of roughly $852 billion. OpenAI is also reportedly preparing for an IPO, though it has yet to make any formal announcement.

Frontier AI Giants Prepare for Public Markets

Investment analysts increasingly expect Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI to all pursue IPOs within the year, marking a historic transition of the AI era's dominant startups into public markets. xAI is reportedly targeting a listing as early as June 12.

Investors and media are especially focused on Anthropic's revenue trajectory. Once the S-1 filing becomes public, investors will gain access to detailed financial metrics including revenue, operating profit, GPU infrastructure spending and cash flow. The market is particularly interested because Anthropic has indicated it may achieve profitability this quarter.

If realized, the profit milestone would mark the first profitable quarter for a major AI model company. Anthropic has correspondingly raised its annual recurring revenue (ARR) estimate to about $47 billion.

Industry observers attribute the improving financial outlook to Anthropic's longstanding focus on enterprise and developer customers. CNBC highlighted the rapid expansion of Anthropic's AI coding platform Claude Code among enterprise users, which has become a major revenue driver. In effect, the developer ecosystem has become synonymous with the enterprise AI market.

Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao recently said demand for Claude from enterprise clients had reached levels "that a single delivery model cannot handle."

To accelerate enterprise expansion, Anthropic last month established a roughly $15 billion joint venture with several private equity firms. The strategy is designed to distribute Anthropic AI technology across hundreds of portfolio companies owned by those firms.

Enterprise Strategy Seen Driving Path to Profitability

The AI enterprise services joint venture includes major private equity and asset management firms such as Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, Apollo and General Atlantic. The entity aims to directly deploy Claude AI across hundreds of companies within those investment portfolios.

The venture focuses on rebuilding enterprise workflows around Claude AI at lower costs than traditional consulting firms, helping companies adopt AI-driven transformation across planning, forecasting and reporting functions.

Anthropic also acquired San Francisco-based AI services startup Fractional AI and integrated it into the joint venture. Fractional AI had previously partnered with OpenAI before shifting to Anthropic.

Wall Street generally views OpenAI as dominant in consumer chatbot services, while positioning Anthropic more strongly in software development, code generation and enterprise AI agents.

Once the S-1 filing becomes public, investors will be able to review the number of shares offered, IPO pricing, target valuation, detailed financial statements and risk factors. The filing could become the first major financial disclosure revealing the true profitability dynamics, GPU cost structures and revenue growth of a frontier AI company.

According to startup database platform Tracxn, Anthropic has raised a cumulative $132 billion across 18 funding rounds from 94 investors, including 85 institutional investors and nine angel investors.

OpenAI's latest Series G round on March 31 raised about $122 billion, valuing the company at roughly $852 billion. OpenAI has raised approximately $180 billion across 15 rounds from 72 investors.

OpenAI Faces Risks — and Opportunities — as a Later Entrant

If Anthropic reaches public markets before OpenAI, the latter risks losing the narrative advantage associated with becoming the first publicly traded frontier AI company. Anthropic could capture both investor attention and early AI-sector capital allocation.

With xAI also preparing for an IPO, institutional capital could become increasingly competitive. Analysts also warn that Anthropic's IPO valuation multiples may establish a benchmark that OpenAI would later need to exceed and justify to investors.

At the same time, weak post-IPO performance from Anthropic could negatively affect the broader AI sector.

OpenAI also faces additional complications from its ongoing transition from a nonprofit structure to a for-profit entity. Prolonged restructuring could continue exposing the company to legal and regulatory uncertainty before any IPO. Some investments from SoftBank and hyperscale cloud providers are also reportedly tied to future IPO-related milestones.

Still, entering the market later could provide strategic advantages for OpenAI. By observing investor reactions to Anthropic's valuation, regulatory scrutiny and roadshow execution, OpenAI could refine its own IPO strategy.

Anthropic's listing would also provide the first real benchmark for how public investors evaluate frontier AI companies — including acceptable levels of GPU and data center capital expenditure, tolerance for losses and revenue-based valuation multiples.

OpenAI may also benefit from stronger consumer brand recognition. Some analysts believe that if Anthropic performs well and enthusiasm for AI remains elevated, OpenAI could ultimately command an even higher valuation.

Anthropic's fundraising and IPO preparations are particularly notable because the company remains designated as a supply chain risk entity by the US Department of Defense.

Fortune magazine previously questioned whether investors would overlook the government-related risks associated with that designation. The classification reportedly led some US government agencies to terminate contracts involving Anthropic technology, while also affecting enterprise software vendors incorporating Anthropic AI functions.

Fortune argued that strong model performance and revenue growth alone might not guarantee IPO success, as investors would also evaluate Anthropic's regulatory risks, government relationships and access to public-sector contracts. Recent fundraising success and valuation gains appear to have eased some of those concerns, with industry observers pointing in part to the influence of Claude Mythos in reopening discussions with the Trump administration and the Department of Defense.