Anthropic Confidentially Files for IPO at Near-$1 Trillion Valuation in Race Against OpenAI

Anthropic has confidentially filed paperwork for a public listing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, positioning itself to potentially beat longtime rival OpenAI to the public markets as early as this fall. The filing came weeks after Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H funding round that valued the company at approximately $965 billion post money, surpassing OpenAI's most recent private valuation of $852 billion to make Anthropic, for the first time, the most valuable AI startup in the world. The round was co-led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with co-lead participation from Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, Singapore's GIC, ICONIQ, and XN.

Anthropic's revenue trajectory has been extraordinary. The company's annualized run rate stood at approximately $14 billion when it closed its Series G in February and crossed $47 billion by late May, more than a tripling in under four months, driven by surging enterprise adoption of Claude Code and broader Claude deployments. Eight of the Fortune 10 are now Claude enterprise customers, and the company is projecting its first operating profit in the second quarter of 2026, which would make Anthropic the first major frontier AI lab to reach that milestone. An IPO at its current private valuation would rank the company among the top 50 most valuable US public companies on its first day of trading.

The dual IPO race between Anthropic and OpenAI is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated Wall Street events of the decade. OpenAI also filed its S-1 confidentially in recent weeks as it prepares for its own public debut. The two companies have been in fierce competition on fundraising, user growth, and model capabilities, and market observers say their simultaneous march toward public listings will force investors to make a definitive bet on which company they believe will define the next era of AI infrastructure. With Anthropic already generating more revenue than OpenAI on a run rate basis and inching ahead on valuation, the competitive dynamics heading into IPO season are closer than at any point in the two companies' histories.