Anthropic formally files paperwork for IPO with U.S. SEC, furthers 2026 AI IPO race

Anthropic, the Claude AI maker and one of the top AI firms globally, has officially filed a confidential S-1 draft statement with the U.S. SEC today, setting up for an IPO that could value the firm at almost $1 trillion.

Neither the number of shares nor the offering price has been set, and the IPO remains contingent on the SEC completing its review as well as market conditions.

Anthropic’s numbers

Anthropic had held a funding round a couple of days before this S-1 filing, a $65 billion Series H round led by Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer, Altimeter Capital, and Greenoaks. This round valued Anthropic at $965 billion, an amount that comfortably overtakes OpenAI’s most recent $852 billion valuation from March.

Anthropic has also seen a steep revenue growth over the past few months, up to a year, with annual revenue rate hitting $47 billion as of early May, up from $30 billion just one month prior and $9 billion a year ago. This growth is majorly due to the global adoption of Claude models, both by enterprises and the general public, most especially the Claude Code programming tool.

The 2026 IPO race

Anthropic’s filing comes after a range of tech IPO filings in the past month. SpaceX submitted a public S-1 on May 20 and is targeting a June 12 Nasdaq listing at a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $1.8 trillion, as previously reported by Cryptopolitan. OpenAI also filed its own confidential registration around May 22 and is looking at a September 2026 debut at a valuation exceeding $1 trillion, Cryptopolitan also reported.

These three filings arriving within weeks of each other are notably from AI firms, and also equal the most concentrated burst of IPO activity among tech companies in years. These companies are eyeing combined public valuations totaling almost $3 trillion.

AI safety concerns and political rifts

CEO Dario Amodei’s interest in ensuring the company’s brand revolves around responsible and safe AI development led the company to restrict access to its most advanced model, Claude Mythos Preview, over concerns about the system’s unexpected ability to find software vulnerabilities. Anthropic also launched a joint cybersecurity program with Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft to let those companies use the model to find and patch security flaws before bad actors could exploit them.

This safety-first stance created friction with the Trump administration, as President Trump threatened to ban Anthropic’s software from federal use after Amodei publicly opposed the Pentagon’s plans to deploy the technology for mass civilian surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

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