Anthropic has filed to go public. On Monday the company submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, kicking off the formal process toward what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest IPOs ever, according to The Verge AI. After months of speculation over who would move first in the AI IPO race, Anthropic beat its biggest rival to the punch.
This matters because of the number attached to it. As of its fundraise last week, Anthropic is being called the world’s most valuable startup, with a post-money valuation of $965 billion. That tops OpenAI’s $852 billion. The maker of Claude going public would hand investors their first real chance to buy directly into a frontier AI lab, and it sets a market benchmark that every competitor will be measured against.
What was actually filed
Here’s the part worth understanding. Anthropic chose to file confidentially, The Verge AI reports. A confidential draft registration lets a company start the SEC review process without immediately exposing the details most people want to see.
That means the following stay private for now:
- Detailed financials and revenue
- Risk factors that could threaten the business
- Executive compensation
Those disclosures come later, once Anthropic moves toward a public filing ahead of the actual offering. So while the headline is huge, the substance investors crave is still locked up. Confidential filings are routine for big tech debuts, but they do delay the moment when we learn how the business really runs.
Why the timing stands out
The filing lands less than two weeks before SpaceX’s planned June 12 IPO. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to raise $80 billion, which would make it the largest public debut in history. That puts two of the most watched offerings of the decade on the calendar within days of each other.
There’s a tangled web here worth tracing. SpaceX owns xAI, another Anthropic rival. And Anthropic just signed a deal to pay SpaceX $15 billion per year to use its data centers. So Anthropic is now a major customer of a company controlled by one of its competitors. That kind of dependency is exactly the sort of thing that shows up in risk disclosures later, and it’s worth keeping an eye on as more details surface.
The filing also comes shortly after OpenAI won its high-profile legal fight with Musk. A judge dismissed all of Musk’s claims on statute of limitations grounds. The legal cloud over OpenAI lifting, paired with Anthropic’s filing, suggests the AI leaders are clearing the decks to chase public capital.
Why it matters for the industry
What stands out is the signal this sends. Until now, the frontier labs have run on private megarounds from a handful of deep-pocketed backers. An IPO changes the rules. Public markets bring quarterly scrutiny, real disclosure, and a stock price that reacts to every model launch, lawsuit, and compute bill.
For practitioners and businesses building on Claude, a public Anthropic is a mixed bag:
- More transparency. Eventually you’ll see actual revenue, margins, and spending, which helps you judge the platform’s staying power.
- More pressure. Public companies answer to shareholders, and that can shift priorities toward monetization and away from pure research.
- More fuel. A successful raise gives Anthropic the cash to compete on compute, talent, and pricing.
It also raises the stakes for OpenAI. Being second to file, and carrying a lower valuation, puts pressure on Sam Altman’s company to respond. The race that defined the past two years is now moving into the open market.
What to watch next
Expect a quiet stretch while the SEC reviews the confidential draft. The real fireworks come when Anthropic files publicly and those financials finally hit the page. That’s when we’ll learn how much revenue a $965 billion valuation is actually built on, and how exposed the company is to deals like the SpaceX compute agreement.
For now, the milestone is the message: the AI IPO era has officially started. Full details are available at the original report from The Verge AI.