Anthropic Files for a Record IPO, Overtaking OpenAI as the World's Most Valuable AI Startup

Anthropic, the artificial-intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, confidentially filed draft paperwork for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1, 2026 — capping an extraordinary stretch in which a five-year-old startup vaulted past OpenAI to become the most valuable AI company in the world.

The filing landed less than a week after Anthropic closed a Series H round that raised roughly $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, pushing the company to the very edge of the trillion-dollar mark that not long ago seemed reserved for the largest public technology firms.

The numbers behind the filing

The valuation is the headline. At $965 billion, Anthropic has — at least on paper — overtaken OpenAI as the highest-valued AI startup, a symbolic reversal for a company founded by former OpenAI researchers. The Series H was co-led by a roster of crossover and growth investors including Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia, Capital Group, Coatue and D1, with chipmakers and memory suppliers such as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron joining as strategic partners.

That investor mix tells its own story: the money is coming not just from venture firms but from the hardware companies whose chips and memory the AI boom depends on.

A revenue curve that’s hard to believe

What has investors willing to underwrite a near-trillion-dollar valuation is growth. Anthropic’s annualized revenue run-rate reached roughly $47 billion in May 2026, up from about $10 billion at the end of 2025 — a near five-fold jump in under six months. The company has told investors it expected to clear $50 billion on a run-rate basis by the end of June.

Much of that demand is enterprise: businesses paying for Claude through APIs, and developers leaning on tools like Claude Code. The pitch to Wall Street is not just scale but a credible path to profitability, a claim few of Anthropic’s rivals can make as loudly.

Entangled with Big Tech

An IPO will finally force daylight onto one of the most-watched questions in technology: how much are Big Tech’s AI bets actually worth? Amazon’s roughly $8 billion investment in Anthropic is now reportedly worth more than $70 billion. Google, which committed up to $40 billion more in April 2026 — $10 billion immediately and $30 billion tied to milestones — holds a stake reported at around 14%, contractually capped at 15%.

That entanglement has drawn a pointed critique: that a meaningful share of the AI profits showing up on Amazon’s and Alphabet’s balance sheets are, in effect, Anthropic’s. A public listing would put real, mark-to-market numbers on those holdings for the first time.

The race with OpenAI

Anthropic did not have the spotlight to itself for long. On June 8, 2026 — exactly a week later — OpenAI confidentially filed for its own IPO, setting up the prospect of two of the most consequential technology debuts in a generation hitting the market in the same window.

For bankers, it is a once-in-a-cycle event. For investors, it is a test of whether the public markets will embrace AI valuations that have, so far, been set behind closed doors.

The bubble question

Not everyone is convinced. Skeptics draw comparisons to the dot-com era, warning that valuations have outrun even Anthropic’s remarkable revenue. The company is growing fast, but $965 billion implies expectations of growth continuing at a pace that has almost no historical precedent.

Much remains unknown. Because the S-1 is confidential, the public version of the prospectus, the eventual share price, and a firm listing date have not been disclosed; reporting describes the timing only as “this fall.” When that document becomes public, it will offer the clearest look yet at the economics of the AI boom — and a verdict, from the market, on whether the hype is justified.

Sources

1. CNBC — Anthropic files IPO prospectus (June 1, 2026)
2. TechCrunch — Anthropic files to go public (June 1, 2026)
3. Fortune — Anthropic confidentially files IPO at $965B valuation (June 1, 2026)
4. CNBC — Anthropic’s explosive revenue growth (May 20, 2026)
5. Fortune — Amazon and Google’s billions in Anthropic (June 4, 2026)
6. CNBC — OpenAI confidentially files for IPO (June 8, 2026)