The Company Behind Claude Just Filed for an IPO. Is It Worth Buying?

After months of anticipation, Anthropic has confidentially filed to go public.

The AI start-up just topped OpenAI in market value last week, closing a $65 billlion funding round that valued the company at $965 billion, post-money.

Now Anthropic, which owns the Claude chatbot and related products, is set to beat OpenAI to the public markets as well.

The confidentiality means that investors don’t get any of the financial figures that come in the S-1 report, but Anthropic will eventually have to reveal them.

Still, the timing of the decision is important. Before discussing whether the Anthropic IPO is worth buying, let’s explore why the AI start-up chose to go public now.

Image source: Getty Images.

The race with OpenAI

SpaceX is on track to go public later this month, potentially raising as much as $75 billion in what’s likely to be the biggest IPO ever.

OpenAI and Anthropic are the two other highly anticipated IPOs this year, and both companies have valuations already pushing $1 trillion.

However, IPO investors don’t have unlimited capital to invest in these companies, so being first to market over OpenAI, its chief rival, could give Anthropic an edge.

This dynamic has played out before between industry rivals. Lyft, for example, went to market two months before Uber. Though both stocks fell shortly afterward, the move was still seen as a win for Lyft and helped it secure a high IPO price.

Is Anthropic a buy?

Anthropic revealed some key information in its funding announcement last week. The company’s revenue run rate crossed $47 billion earlier in May, meaning it’s now generating nearly $4 billion a month in revenue. Anthropic recorded just $10 billion in revenue last year, so it’s growing by a triple-digit rate, and its growth appears to have accelerated as Claude and its related plug-ins have taken off.

Anthropic also released Claude Opus 4.8, the latest update to its flagship AI model, which topped frontier models from OpenAI and Google in key tests of coding and agentic skills, and extended its lead in vibecoding.

Of the three major companies going public this year, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, Anthropic looks like the most attractive.

It's generating more revenue and growing faster than SpaceX, and it has leaped past OpenAI in valuation, thanks to the advances in its AI model.

Based on a sales multiple of around 20, according to its current run rate, Anthropic seems reasonably priced, especially considering how fast it’s growing. We don’t know what the company’s bottom line looks like, but Anthropic told investors it was on track to turn an operating profit for the first time this quarter, as it expected revenue to more than double to $10.9 billion.

If that’s true, I think the Anthropic IPO is worth buying, though I’d like to see the full financial results before making a decision. Holding onto the lead in the AI race won’t be easy, but the spoils are likely to be huge for whoever can do it. Right now, Anthropic is clearly benefiting.

Jeremy Bowman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Lyft and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.