Anthropic has taken the lead in the race for an initial public offering (IPO) among AI companies by submitting a confidential S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On June 1, Anthropic officially announced that it had submitted the draft for its common stock offering to the SEC. The number of shares and the offering price have yet to be determined, and the timing of the IPO will depend on market conditions.
The company is expected to go public in October 2026 and has enlisted the law firm Wilson Sonsini, which managed Google’s IPO in 2004, to expedite its preparations.
This confidential filing comes less than a week after Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, establishing its valuation at $965 billion. During the Series H announcement, the company reported an annualized revenue of $47 billion, a significant increase from last year's $10 billion.
Anthropic's valuation of $965 billion surpasses OpenAI's valuation of $852 billion as of March, setting a new record for AI companies. Founded in 2021 by researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic focuses on its flagship products, the Claude family of large language models and the coding assistant Claude Code.
Anthropic's advantage in the IPO race against OpenAI is attributed to structural issues. OpenAI has not yet completed its transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity, which could delay its IPO schedule. This situation increases the likelihood that Anthropic will be the first AI company to debut in the public market.
Anthropic aims to reach profitability by 2028, two years ahead of OpenAI's target of 2030, which has led to positive assessments of its financial health.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is also set to begin a roadshow on June 4, aiming to raise approximately $75 billion with a target valuation of $1.75 trillion. The simultaneous visibility of IPOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX is raising expectations for a robust U.S. IPO market.
Goldman Sachs predicts that if major deals like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic materialize, the total amount raised from U.S. IPOs this year could reach a record $160 billion, nearly four times the amount raised the previous year.
South Korean companies have significant exposure to Anthropic. SK Telecom invested about $100 million in Anthropic in August 2023 to establish a strategic partnership, when Anthropic's valuation was around $5 billion. Following the Series H funding, the value of SK Telecom's stake is estimated to be as high as 4 trillion won, suggesting a potential return of over 20 times the initial investment.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix also participated as "strategic infrastructure partners" in the Series H round, securing stakes, although the investment amounts were not disclosed. Industry insiders suggest that Samsung's role may extend beyond memory supply to include the production of custom AI chips for Claude. Anthropic's announcement noted that its partners' technologies play a crucial role in both memory and storage as well as logic chip supply.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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