Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the Claude chatbot, is reportedly preparing for one of the largest initial public offerings (IPOs) in history, potentially as early as 2026, the Financial Times reported.
The move could give the Alphabet- and Amazon-backed firm a faster route to raise capital and boost its leverage for acquisitions as AI adoption surges and investor appetite intensifies.
“While we continue to explore options, no decision has been made on if or when an IPO will occur,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters.
According to the FT, the startup has held preliminary discussions with major investment banks about a potential listing, though talks remain informal and no underwriters have been chosen.
A private funding round could value the company at more than $300 billion, up from its previous $183 billion valuation.
Led by CEO Dario Amodei, Anthropic projects that it could more than double, or even nearly triple, its annualized revenue run rate to around $26 billion next year. The startup serves over 300,000 business and enterprise customers.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI, a major rival, is also preparing for a potential IPO that could rank among the largest ever, with a valuation of up to $1 trillion, although its CFO, Sarah Friar, said a public listing is not in the near-term plans.
Anthropic recently secured up to $15 billion in investments from Microsoft and Nvidia as part of a $30 billion commitment to use Microsoft’s cloud services.
On Tuesday, the company also announced the acquisition of Bun, a JavaScript runtime praised for outperforming Node.js and used by Netflix, Spotify and other major firms. Bun powers Claude Code, which reached $1 billion in annual revenue within six months of launch.
The acquisition brings the full Bun team on board to expand Anthropic’s AI coding tools while keeping the technology open source.