Anthropic PBC confidentially submitted a draft Form S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, putting the Claude developer on track to become the first frontier AI lab to list on a U.S. exchange. The filing, made under Rule 135 of the Securities Act of 1933, lands less than a week after Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation, co-led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia, Capital Group, Coatue, and D1 Capital Partners, according to TechCrunch.
That valuation edges past OpenAI’s $852 billion mark, set in a $122 billion round that closed in March. The symbolic ordering matters. For most of the post-ChatGPT cycle, OpenAI has been the default reference price for generative AI; Anthropic now occupies that slot, and is moving toward the disclosure regime that comes with it.
The financials are why. Bloomberg reports Anthropic expects $10.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, more than doubling from the prior three months, and is on pace for its first profitable quarter. The company has told investors it’ll pass a $50 billion annualized run rate by the end of next month, up from a current $47 billion and from $10 billion in annual revenue last year, per CNBC.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, asked about his own company’s listing path, told CNBC he’s not focused on the timing of a potential listing for the ChatGPT maker. SpaceX, which filed confidentially on April 1 targeting a $2 trillion valuation, is expected to begin its roadshow this week.
The backdrop is a market that has quietly reopened. Global IPO issuance hit $87.5 billion through May 26, the highest year-to-date total since 2021, per Dealogic data cited by Reuters. SEC review of the draft is expected to run several weeks. The 2021 comparison is the one Anthropic’s bankers will be watching, and not only for the upside.