Anthropic said it has secretly filed an IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, setting up a potentially historic stock sale for investors ready to take the leap into artificial intelligence.
“This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review,” Anthropic said in a statement Monday. “The proposed initial public offering is subject to market conditions and other factors.”
The announcement puts Anthropic ahead of rival OpenAI, which is preparing its own confidential filing. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has officially filed its prospectus and is gearing up for a roadshow this week, with plans to debut next week.
Filing a confidential prospectus does not bind Anthropic to any specific deadline for listing. The official prospectus must be in the hands of investors at least 15 days before the company begins its roadshow. SpaceX filed a confidential application on April 1st and released a public prospectus on May 20th.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of executives and researchers who defected from OpenAI over concerns about the company’s direction. Anthropic is best known for its family of AI models called Claude, which power products such as the popular coding assistant Claude Code.
The company has experienced explosive growth this year, announcing in May that its revenue run rate had ballooned from $10 billion in annual revenue last year to $47 billion. Last week, the company closed a funding round at a valuation of $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in late March.
Anthropic introduced a model this year called Claude Mythos Preview with advanced cybersecurity features that captivated Wall Street and Washington, D.C., officials. The company has released the model to select companies as part of a cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing and continues to have conversations with senior members of the Trump administration about its capabilities.
Mythos’ popularity has come as a relief to some investors and executives who feared Anthropic’s growth would be hurt by its clash with the Pentagon earlier this year. After negotiations between the two countries broke down, the company’s models were placed on the Pentagon’s blacklist.
But while defense contractors abandoned Anthropic to follow orders from the Department of Defense, the company’s growth in the private sector has only accelerated as more companies adopt its models and AI coding tools. Anthropic also gained support among consumers after the dispute, with Claude jumping to No. 1 on Apple’s chart of top free apps in the U.S. in late February.
Anthropic sued the Trump administration to remove its blacklisting, and the lawsuit is still ongoing. President Donald Trump told CNBC in April that an agreement between Anthropic and the Department of Defense was “possible.”
Anthropic’s rapid growth has seen the company sign a number of major infrastructure deals in recent months to increase production capacity. Last month, the company reached an agreement with rival SpaceX to use the computing available at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
As part of the deal, Anthropic will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029, according to SpaceX’s prospectus. Either company may terminate the agreement with 90 days’ notice.
WATCH: Anthropic raises $65 billion in latest funding round at $965 billion valuation
