Anthropic IPO: everything you need to know + how to buy shares

When could the Anthropic IPO take place?

On 1 June 2026, Anthrophic officially filed confidential IPO documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, edging ahead of rival OpenAI in a closely watched race to reach public markets. According to multiple media reports, the company could officially list on the Nasdaq or NYSE as early as October 2026, though no firm pricing date has been set. For the latest on what is coming to market, see our upcoming IPOs page.

The confidential filing allows Anthropic to advance its IPO preparations while shielding sensitive financial details from its rivals and the public — but it doesn't disclose the size or terms of the offering. The move sets up an early test of whether investor appetite for artificial intelligence, which has fuelled gigantic private valuations and widespread talk of trillion-dollar listings, will hold up in the public market.

OpenAI, Anthropic's main rival and owner of ChatGPT, confidentially filed just days later. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said in a CNBC interview that he is not focused on the timing of a potential listing and that the company will go public when it makes sense to do so, there is a sense that the pair are in a race to seize first mover advantage.

At present, it seems that Anthropic has seized the narrative advantage by filing first, though it's worth noting that OpenAI now has the option to watch how institutional investors react to audited frontier AI financials before committing to its own price.

The filing follows a period of massive funding activity. Anthropic raised $30 billion in a Series G round at a $380 billion valuation in February 2026, before a $65 billion Series H-1 round in May lifted its valuation to approximately $965 billion. The speed at which the paper valuation rose may indicate that fair pricing of this IPO could be difficult to set.

Since its founding in 2021, the company has raised a cumulative total of over $129 billion.

How to buy Anthropic shares if the company lists

If Anthropic lists on the Nasdaq or NYSE, retail investors will be able to purchase shares with IG on the day of the listing:

1. Do your research on IPOs and AI sector risks
2. Open a share dealing or ISA account
3. Search for Anthropic (ticker to be confirmed)
4. Choose the number of shares or amount you wish to invest
5. Place your deal

When dealing shares, you own the stock and become a shareholder in the company. You'll profit if the share price rises above the point at which you bought, or potentially from any dividends paid. You could get back less than you put in. Note that Anthropic has no current plans to pay dividends in the near term, given its stated target of reaching cash-flow profitability by 2028.

It's also worth noting that Anthropic has explicitly warned that any unapproved sale or transfer of its private shares, including through tokenised products or special purpose vehicles, is void and will not be recognised on its books. In May 2026 the company specifically warned eight secondary market platforms, including Forge, Hiive and Sydecar, that they are unauthorised and that related transactions will be deemed invalid.

Investors should be extremely cautious of any pre-IPO products claiming exposure to Anthropic stock ahead of an official listing, outside of approved ETFs.

What will Anthropic be valued at and what will the share price be?

Anthropic's S-1 was filed following a $65 billion Series H-1 round that valued the company at approximately $965 billion. A debut above the $1 trillion mark is now considered the base case by many investment bankers, assuming markets cooperate.

According to Fortune, Anthropic is expected to join SpaceX and OpenAI as the three trillion-dollar listings of 2026 — a combination of mega-listings whose combined demand for capital is so large that analysts warn it could create disruptions in global capital markets.

The company's valuation growth has been extraordinary even by Silicon Valley standards. It was valued at $61.5 billion in March 2025 but had rocketed to approximately $965 billion just over a year later, surpassing OpenAI, which was valued at approximately $852 billion in its most recent funding round. Annualised revenue has grown explosively, surging from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to over $44 billion by May 2026, a more than fivefold increase in under six months. Based on this revenue figure, Anthropic is currently trading at a price-to-sales ratio of approximately 22x, which some analysts flag as a valuation risk.

The company posted a loss of roughly $5.6 billion in 2024, but aims to reach $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in free cash flow by 2028, ahead of OpenAI, which is not expected to turn a profit until 2030.

The share price itself will be determined by the number of shares Anthropic chooses to issue and the proportion of the company offered as a free float. However, you might guess somewhere in the $50 to $150 per share range in keeping with premium stock prices.

At a valuation near $1 trillion, Anthropic would vault to the top tier of the S&P 500 alongside a handful of the world's most dominant companies. However, it's worth noting that many analysts consider its trillion-dollar listing ambition to be overvalued.

What is Anthropic's business model?

Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by former OpenAI Vice President of Research Dario Amodei, alongside his sister Daniela Amodei and several former OpenAI core members. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company focuses on developing safe, interpretable and controllable AI systems.

Its flagship product is the Claude family of large language models, which encompasses the Claude 3 and 4 series, the programming-specific Claude Code, the enterprise-grade Claude Enterprise and API services.

Claude is widely regarded as a primary competitor to ChatGPT, and is often regarded as sporting a low hallucination rate, strong ethical alignment and ultra-long context windows — all qualities that have made it popular with enterprise and developer communities.

Revenue comes primarily from businesses and large enterprises rather than casual consumer users. Customers use Claude inside real workflows including coding, customer support, legal review, research, finance, data analysis and internal knowledge management. Approximately 80% of Anthropic's revenue is derived from enterprise customers, compared with roughly 40% for OpenAI.

In April 2026, Anthropic's enterprise AI market share reached 34.4%, surpassing OpenAI's 32.3% for the first time. Today, eight Fortune 10 companies are clients.

A key recent growth driver has been Claude Code, which surpassed $1 billion in annualised revenue within six months of launch. The number of corporate customers paying over $1 million annually rose from 500 in February 2026 to more than 1,000 by April, doubling in under two months.

The company distributes Claude directly and via Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud. Its biggest cost is compute — the physical chips, servers and infrastructure required to run Claude at scale — but revenue is growing faster than compute spending, meaning unit economics are improving. Anthropic projects revenues of around $55 billion by 2027, though its cash-flow positive target has been pushed back to 2028.

Most recently, the company released Claude Fable 5, the public version of its most powerful Mythos class AI model, which comes with a significant performance improvement over the previous Opus tier.

To mitigate potential security and weaponisation risks, the company is offering a dual-release system where the public-facing Fable 5 operates with strict safety 'seatbelts,' while the identical underlying model, known as Mythos 5, remains restricted to a highly controlled group of government and cybersecurity partners through 'Project Glasswing' which addresses critical infrastructure threats.

Why are there Anthropic ethical concerns?

Anthropic occupies an unusual position in the AI ethics debate. The company was founded with AI safety as a core mission, yet the very act of developing increasingly powerful frontier models draws criticism from those who argue that building capable AI at speed creates risks that cannot be fully managed, regardless of any good intentions.

In February 2026, the US Department of War placed Anthropic on its supply chain risk list and prohibited federal contractors from using its services, after the company refused to allow Claude to be used for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weaponry.

Oral arguments for the related lawsuit were heard on 19 May 2026, with judges expressing divided opinions. By contrast, seven competitors including OpenAI were authorised to work with the Pentagon, a distinction which may weigh on institutional investor sentiment, both positively and negatively, ahead of the IPO.

Operationally, in March 2026 Anthropic suffered at least five major outages following a series of intensive product launches, exposing previously hidden computing power bottlenecks and an over-reliance on AWS infrastructure, a risk that investors in the IPO may wish to weigh carefully.

Broader concerns centre on the enormous energy consumption and carbon footprint associated with running large-scale AI infrastructure, as well as the concentration of power that comes from Anthropic's deep reliance on Amazon and Google as both investors and cloud providers.

There are also ongoing debates about the societal impact of AI on employment, the potential for Claude to be misused for disinformation or manipulation, and whether the company's safety-focused public positioning accurately reflects its commercial incentives as it races toward a trillion-dollar listing.

In 2025, hundreds of public figures including AI experts, five Nobel Prize laureates and former senior US national security officials signed a statement calling for a ban on the development of superintelligence, a debate in which Anthropic, being one of the world's leading frontier AI labs, sits squarely at the epicentre.

Anthropic-related investments

While you wait for the Anthropic IPO, there are a number of ways to gain indirect exposure today.

Amazon and Google offer the most direct listed exposure, as both are major investors and primary distribution partners for Claude. Amazon's cumulative investment in Anthropic is among the largest of any external AI bet in its history, and Claude is integrated deeply into Amazon Bedrock.

Microsoft has also invested in Anthropic, despite being the largest backer of rival OpenAI, reflecting a broader multi-model strategy among big tech.

For smaller companies, the exposure is potentially even more significant relative to their size. Zoom, which has integrated Claude into its AI Companion and Contact Centre products, has a market capitalisation of only around $30 billion, meaning its <1% Anthropic stake could become a meaningful variable in how the market values the business once Anthropic lists publicly.

For broader sector exposure, a number of AI-themed ETFs are worth considering. ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) is actively managed and focuses on disruptive innovation, while the iShares Robotics and AI ETF (IRBO), Global X Robotics & AI ETF (BOTZ), and Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ) all track indices of publicly listed AI and robotics companies and may include Anthropic upon listing. For a broader view of how to invest in the AI theme, see our guide on how to invest in AI stocks and ETFs.

Anthropic IPO summed up

• Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on 1 June 2026, targeting a valuation of roughly $965 billion in one of the largest AI listings ever attempted
• The company could officially list on the Nasdaq or NYSE as early as October 2026, potentially ahead of rival OpenAI
• Annualised revenue surged from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to over $44 billion by May 2026, a more than fivefold increase
• Around 80% of revenue comes from enterprise customers, with Anthropic's share of the enterprise AI market surpassing OpenAI's for the first time in April 2026
• The company aims for $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in free cash flow by 2028, though it posted a $5.6 billion loss in 2024 and has pushed cash-flow profitability back to 2028