Anthropic reportedly planning one of the biggest IPOs ever as race with OpenAI heats up

One of the world’s biggest AI startups might be eyeing a massive IPO.

According to a new report in the Financial Times, Anthropic has tapped the Palo Alto-based law firm Wilson Sonsini to help the company go public as soon as early next year. The law firm has a deep well of experience shepherding major tech IPOs and has worked with Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, and Square on their public offerings.

In the lead-up to a potential IPO, the Financial Times reports that the company is drumming up a private round of funding that would peg its value at over $300 billion. According to the report, the company is also discussing its plans with large investment banks, but those talks are in their early stages. Anthropic might be trying to outmaneuver its rival OpenAI, which is reportedly considering an IPO in the second half of 2026, by going public first and could be valued at as much as a once-unthinkable $1 trillion.

OpenAI recently pivoted away from its roots as a nonprofit to restructure itself as a public benefit corporation in a move that set the stage for a potential future IPO. Though the for-profit part of OpenAI will continue to operate under a nonprofit parent company, the change ushers in a new era for the business of AI – one likely to be more focused on juicing revenue, attracting investment and pleasing shareholders. 

Anthropic sets itself apart

Anthropic, which was founded by a group of OpenAI executives who split off in 2021, is backed by billions in investment from Amazon and Google. Unlike its prominent Microsoft-backed rival, Anthropic focuses on business applications for its AI tools rather than racing to capture a broad swath of the consumer market with generative AI multimedia.

“We are interested in our consumer users to the degree they are doing work, solving problems in their life,” Anthropic design chief Joel Lewenstein told Fast Company in an October interview. “Because we’re not interested in passive consumption and image generation and video generation, we just sort of have ruled those out from a mission perspective.” 

The company is known for a more conservative approach to AI development that takes the technology’s many risks and safety concerns into account – an approach that could benefit its long term trajectory. 

“Our interests are in making things that are beneficial while minimizing the risks of those same products because everything has a double-edged sword,” Lewenstein told Fast Company. “We see… helping people grow and expand and create and solve problems as being the right risk-reward tradeoff.” 

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