AI giant Anthropic says it plans to list on US stock market

The AI company behind Claude is set to offer the public shares of stock sometime this year. AI giant Anthropic plans to list on US stock market Copyright current_year BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. Copyright current_year BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. Anthropic founder and chief executive Dario Amodei on a stage speaking. He is wearing a blue suit and glasses. AI giant Anthropic says it plans to list on US stock market AI giant Anthropic has said it plans to become a public company in the US. The company behind the popular chatbot Claude said on Monday it had filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in order to make an initial public offering (IPO) this year. Once public, people will be able to buy and trade shares in the firm on the stock market, though the company said the price and number of shares to be offered "have not yet been set". Anthropic's stock market plans, coming alongside those of Elon Musk's SpaceX, will likely function as a test of whether investor appetite matches the soaring valuations of AI firms. Anthropic's stock market plans, coming alongside those of , will likely function as a test of whether investor appetite matches the soaring valuations of AI firms. Anthropic, founded just five years ago by chief executive Dario Amodei and a handful of other executives, recently raised money from private investors that valued the company at more than $965bn (£717bn ). While based on an assumption of future growth, that valuation put Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which most recently was valued by private investors at $852bn. Chief executive Dario Amodei founded Anthropic after working several years at OpenAI, a company he left after disagreements with its chief executive Sam Altman. The two firms have since become fierce rivals in the AI world, developing similar technology and fighting for the attention and spending of users and corporate customers. OpenAI is also reportedly considering going public this year. Altman told CNBC on Monday while his company did intend to go public, it was in no rush to do so. "We'll do it when it makes sense," Altman said. Should OpenAI's listing come to pass, the US capital markets are poised to see an historic level of investment in just a handful of companies. Should OpenAI's listing come to pass, the US capital markets are poised to see an historic level of investment SpaceX alone is expected to break stock market records with its target valuation, but the potential value of Anthropic and OpenAI are not far behind. Elon Musk wearing a black suit, white shirt, and black tie looking into the distance SpaceX files for stock market debut that could make Elon Musk a trillionaire Listing will be 'yardstick for investors' "Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI wants to be the last major AI pure-play to list," Troy Hooper, a leader of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, said. "The first mover has a real chance to define how public markets value generative AI, setting up the yardstick that investors will use to measure everyone else." Harrison Rolfes, a research analyst a Pitchbook, added Anthropic's IPO "will be the most scrutinized public offering in tech history", with investors poring over its business margins, sales and profitability for signs that valuations and costs of AI make financial sense. By being so close to SpaceX's upcoming stock market debut, Rolfes said that the two companies "represent the largest concentration of pre-IPO capital ever brought to market simultaneously". "The 2026 window either becomes the most consequential IPO cycle since the dot-com era or the most expensive lesson in narrative-versus-fundamentals that public markets have ever taught," Rolfes said. Anthropic has been fighting this year, too, with the US Department of Defense (DoD). , too, with the US Department of Defense (DoD). After the DoD late last year insisted that Anthropic should accept contractual terms as part of a $200m deal which stated government agencies could use AI tools like Claude for "any lawful use", Amodei made public his concerns. Although Claude was the first modern AI chatbot and model to be deployed on US government networks that were classified, the new contract language suggested to Anthropic the possibility of its AI being used in mass domestic surveillance or on fully-autonomous weapons of war. President Donald Trump denounced the company, and defense secretary Pete Hegseth quickly prohibited any US agency from using Claude. , and defense secretary Pete Hegseth quickly prohibited any US agency from using Claude. Anthropic subsequently launched legal action against the government. Although there are recent signs from the White House that tensions with Anthropic have cooled, the lawsuit is ongoing. Anthropic subsequently launched legal action against the government. Although there are recent that tensions with Anthropic have cooled, the lawsuit is ongoing. Such acrimony has not scared off other Anthropic customers. The company has told investors that it expects to turn a profit in the first half of this year, as sales of its Claude product and related services have grown significantly. Neither SpaceX nor OpenAI are currently profitable. Nine banks have been offered access to GPT 5.5 Cyber, as fierce rival Anthropic has blocked previews of its tool. The technology giant's boss Jensen Huang called the move the "reinvention of the computer". BBC Verify has analysed videos of attacks in occupied Ukraine on Russian trucks carrying ammunition, fuel and food.