Anthropic Files for Initial Public Offering in Blockbuster Test

Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic filed paperwork on Monday for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ANT that could become one of the largest stock market listings in history.

The San Francisco company revealed in a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it generated $16.3 billion in revenue during the first half of 2026.

Analysts expect the blockbuster offering to value the five-year-old creator of the Claude chatbot between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, potentially eclipsing SpaceX's record public debut in June.

The market debut arrives as investors weigh the immense financial upside of the artificial intelligence boom against questions about whether capital-intensive AI labs can maintain profitability amid soaring infrastructure costs.

"Going public has a lot of advantages," said Jim Angel, an associate professor and markets specialist at Georgetown University.

"It brings in capital for growth. It makes it easier for you to raise additional capital elsewhere. And it makes it possible for your existing investors to cash out."

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including Chief Executive Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei, Anthropic has emerged as a primary rival to OpenAI in the global artificial intelligence race.

The company reported a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first half of 2026, driven largely by massive compute and infrastructure expenses tied to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Business Insider reported that Anthropic recorded $974 million in quarterly operating profit during the second quarter of 2026, demonstrating that frontier artificial intelligence units can turn positive at scale.

The filing also detailed extensive risk factors, including warnings from Anthropic that advanced systems could pose catastrophic threats to humanity if operated without appropriate safeguards and security measures.

Wired reported, citing financial documents and academic experts, that the prospectus leaves out key third-quarter figures and includes aggregate future minimum payment obligations worth approximately $808 billion for compute and infrastructure.

Anthropic plans to list its shares next month, though the final offering price, valuation and number of shares to be released remain undisclosed.