Anthropic IPO: Five things to know before its Wall Street debut

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, is expected to go public within weeksin a listing that could eclipse the record set by SpaceX’s Wall Street debut in June. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Here are five things to know about the company: Built by former OpenAI executives Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives who believed that the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence were not being taken seriously enough. The company — whose name means, somewhat paradoxically, “relating to human beings” — is led by chief executive and co-founder Dario Amodei, a San Francisco native with a doctorate in biophysics from Princeton University, an unusual background among leading technology executives, many of whom studied computer science. His sister, Daniela, is also a co-founder and the company’s president. Anthropic has 5,000 employees, according to PitchBook. From upstart to leading contender Until this year, Anthropic was widely seen as trailing OpenAI, which burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in November 2022, transforming the technology industry and triggering an AI arms race. But while OpenAI expanded into areas ranging from video generation to web browsers, Anthropic pursued a narrower strategy, focusing on artificial intelligence tools for software developers and businesses. That strategy has paid off spectacularly: coding is one of the relatively few artificial intelligence services for which customers have proved willing to pay substantial sums. Claude Code, its assistant for developers, has become one of the company’s most popular products, helping to push Anthropic’s annual revenue rate above $65bn (€55.6bn). Only a small proportion of ChatGPT users, meanwhile, pay a subscription fee, while OpenAI has reportedly scaled back work on video generation and other projects. Trump administration clashes with Anthropic The momentum comes despite severe political headwinds, with Anthropic at loggerheads with the Trump administration — a dispute that could give investors pause. In March, the government terminated its contracts with Anthropic and designated the company a supply-chain risk after it refused to give the military unfettered access to its artificial intelligence models. Anthropic described the move as unconstitutional retaliation and launched legal action against the US government. The dispute could take years to resolve. The White House has also objected to Amodei’s repeated warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence — including its potential impact on jobs — and his calls to regulate the technology in a similar way to airlines or banks. Amodei is also linked to effective altruism, a philosophy of targeted charitable giving scorned by conservatives in Silicon Valley and Washington. Huge sums still needed Like OpenAI, Anthropic requires vast amounts of computing power and infrastructure to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence models and remain ahead of its competitors, amid concerns that China could catch up. Both companies have raised money at unprecedented levels, with Anthropic valued at $965bn (€829bn) after raising $65bn (€55.8bn) in May. As the sums involved grow beyond the capacity of many venture-capital investors and sovereign wealth funds, a public listing would give Anthropic access to a much larger pool of capital. But it would also expose the company to greater scrutiny over whether its vision for the artificial intelligence revolution can produce a sustainable business. OpenAI, after initially considering a listing this year, is now reportedly considering waiting until 2027. Investors must stomach heavy losses According to Bloomberg, Anthropic aims to raise more than the $75bn (€64.3bn) secured by SpaceX in its record June IPO, excluding the over-allotment option exercised later. SpaceX, which absorbed Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI before going public, made its listing a partial bet on artificial intelligence as well as space technology. Its shares skyrocketed initially before coming back down to earth, and now sit at about their $135 offering price. Anthropic's investors will likewise have to stomach huge losses for the foreseeable future. The company lost almost $42bn (€36bn) in 2025, according to US media reports, and is likely to continue burning through cash for years. To attract investors, Anthropic is expected to argue that it is targeting a total addressable market worth more than $30tn (€25.7tn), according to the Wall Street Journal. This refers to its estimate of the potential market available to the company, not its own expected revenue.