Anthropic warms up its engines. And with Claude in the engine, it is aiming for one of the most impressive tech IPOs ever, perhaps as early as 2026. The news comes from Financial Times and tells of a clear strategy: beat OpenAI to the punch and seize the spotlight on the next generation of artificial intelligence before the competition hits the stock market.
The game-changing move
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei after leaving OpenAI, has appointed the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to prepare the ground for the listingAnd the studio is not just any one but the same team that has sfollowed the IPOs of Google, LinkedIn and Lyft, and since 2022 it has also been supporting Anthropic on billion-dollar agreements with Amazon.
According to the FT, the choice of the study represents a level leap in preparations and the signal that the company does not only want to be ready, but get ahead of the curve on OpenAI in what is now a wide-open race for market leadership.
Stratospheric valuations and billion-dollar rounds
The timing is not accidental. Anthropic is in the midst of a new private round This could push the company's valuation above $300 billion, following the $15 billion commitment announced by Microsoft and Nvidia last November. Just a few months ago, the company was valued at $183 billion.
And meanwhile, its business is moving even faster. By 2026, the company is aiming for almost triple annualized revenue, aiming for $26 billion, with over 300.000 enterprise customers. These are impressive numbers, but they require increasingly large amounts of capital. The IPO would also serve to secure deeper financing lines and shares to use as currency for acquisitions.
The Race Against OpenAI
The other major player in the story is inevitably OpenAI. The company led by Sam Altman also... is working behind the scenes on a possible listing, with valuations estimated at up to $1.000 trillion.
The two companies are therefore attempting a double somersault: going public with multiples never experienced before for US startups and with business models made unpredictable from the enormous computational cost of training advanced models. According to the FT, precisely this unknown on the pace and sustainability of investments could represent the main brake, together with the difficulty of setting a credible date.
Nothing has been confirmed from Anthropic so far, with a company spokesperson reiterating that "no decision has been made on when, or even if, to go public."
The operation on Claude and the “enterprise first” strategy
A crucial part of the narrative concerns Claude Opus 4.5, the latest generation of the model that propelled Anthropic to the forefront of the enterprise market. Unlike OpenAI, which is much more exposed to mass consumption thanks to ChatGPT, Anthropic has chosen to position themselves as partners of companies, focusing on reliability, control and cost optimization.
It is a model that speaks therefore directly to institutional investors and which, according to many observers, could become a strategic lever for a listing at stellar valuations.
A puzzle still under construction but 2026 is a watershed year for generative AI
Net of the enthusiasm, the the roadmap is not set in stone. Conversations with the greats investment banks are still preliminary and informal, and those familiar with the dossier warn that 2026 could be an ambitious, if not downright optimistic, target. Some internal moves, such as the 2024 entry of Krishna Rao, formerly of Airbnb and a key figure in the company's IPO, show that Anthropic is already operating “as if it were listed,” working on governance, reporting, and processes in preparation for a possible debut.
If Anthropic and OpenAI both actually land on Wall Street, 2026 would thus become a watershed year in the history of technology: two startups born from a research lab, grown to big tech valuations and ready to compete in the most demanding field, that of public markets.
The question now is whether the market will be ready to bet on two companies with explosive growth, but still far from economic equilibriumThe answer will come soon. And it could permanently change the trajectory of global artificial intelligence.
