Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the Claude chatbot, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, kicking off a race with rival OpenAI to become the next trillion-dollar AI company to hit public markets. The San Francisco-based company, which has significant operations and partnerships in the San Diego tech corridor, is valued at $965 billion after recently raising $65 billion in fresh funding.
The confidential filing, submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, came earlier than expected, as Anthropic looks to beat OpenAI to fresh public capital. Both companies had been expected to begin trading in the fall, but Anthropic’s move accelerates the timeline.
“This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review,” Anthropic said in a statement. “The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set.”
If Anthropic debuts at a $1 trillion valuation, it would rank among the largest IPOs in history, behind SpaceX’s upcoming offering and Saudi Aramco. The race to market matters, analysts say, because whichever company goes first is likely to perform better in the funding race. A similar dynamic played out in 2019, when Lyft went public before Uber and initially outperformed its rival.
“We believe this represents an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years,” said Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush.
For San Diego’s AI and defense technology community, the Anthropic IPO has particular resonance. The company recently signed a deal with SpaceX to purchase data center capacity, and Qualcomm’s custom chip business is positioning itself as a supplier to AI companies seeking alternatives to Nvidia’s dominant GPU architecture.
Anthropic was founded only five years ago by former OpenAI employees and is structured as a public benefit corporation with a stated purpose of “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.” CEO Dario Amodei is already worth $7 billion, according to Forbes, and the IPO would further enrich the company’s founders and early investors.
Source: NBC San Diego | Business of San Diego
