Will Claude, the AI, soon take its first steps on Wall Street? That is at least what many investors think. The company Anthropic is reportedly preparing its initial public offering (IPO) and has recently raised new funding that propelled its valuation beyond that of the potential ChatGPT IPO (OpenAI), the maker of ChatGPT. With a valuation now approaching $1 trillion, the firm stands out as one of the most closely watched players in the technology sector.
But should one invest in Anthropic stock at its prospective IPO? What are the main strengths of the company, what risks should be considered, and how does it position itself against OpenAI? A decryption of this future IPO by the stockbroker ActivTrades.
Anthropic by the numbers: what you need to know about the Claude-creating company
Who is Anthropic?
Anthropic is an American company founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, and several former OpenAI researchers.
Where OpenAI was created with the mission of democratizing artificial intelligence, Anthropic was born from a different vision. The founders believed that AI development should place greater emphasis on safety, model reliability, and alignment with human interests. Their departure from OpenAI was partly motivated by concerns about the strategic and commercial evolution of their former company.
This philosophy has heavily influenced the development of Claude, now considered one of the main competitors to ChatGPT.
The company’s financial growth is equally remarkable. Its annualized revenue run rate reached about $47 billion in May 2026, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025. A rapid ascent backed by a clear strategy: prioritizing businesses, developers, and tools that automate intellectual labor.
Key figures for Anthropic in 2026
Chiffres clés de l’entreprise Anthropic créés avec l’IA
Anthropic’s IPO: what do we know to date?
Rumors, timing and anticipated valuation for Anthropic stock
According to several leading financial media, Anthropic is seriously considering an IPO before the end of 2026. Bloomberg even discusses a possible listing as early as October on the Nasdaq, under the potential ticker symbol “ANTHROPIC.”
At this stage, the company’s leadership has neither confirmed nor denied the exact timing of the operation, nor the listing venue, nor the amount that could be raised during the offering.
For investors, one of the main elements to watch will be the evolution of the company’s private market valuation. This data will help assess whether the IPO price offers an attractive entry point.
Three key steps for an investor in the Anthropic IPO
Before Anthropic’s official IPO launch, several regulatory and financial steps will need to be completed. Here’s what investors should monitor:
- Investors’ appetite around SpaceX’s IPO: The IPO environment remains particularly favorable for big technology companies. After the acquisition of xAI, SpaceX is valued at nearly $1.25 trillion and could conduct the largest IPO in history. Investors will therefore closely watch the interest shown by major funds for SpaceX’s IPO.
- Filing the S-1 form with the SEC: The S-1 document is the most important information source for investors. It will reveal Anthropic’s audited financial statements, its shareholding structure, the intended use of raised capital, and all identified risk factors. No serious IPO analysis can be conducted before this document is published.
- The institutional roadshow: During this phase, executives will meet with major investors to present Anthropic’s strategy and gauge demand. These meetings will help determine the final IPO price.
A historical market context: 2026, the year of three “Mega IPOs”
The potential arrival of Anthropic on the stock market this year comes in a context especially favorable to the tech sector.
2026 could be marked by three major IPOs: SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. According to several estimates reported by Bloomberg, these three operations could represent nearly $3 trillion in combined market capitalization on public markets.
If this scenario is confirmed, it would be one of the largest value transfers in the recent history of financial markets.
Claude stronger than ChatGPT? Anthropic is now worth more than OpenAI
With the announcement of a $65 billion Series H funding round, Anthropic has taken another step forward in its development. The round now places its valuation at about $965 billion.
Thus, the company surpasses OpenAI, whose last known valuation reached nearly $852 billion in spring 2026. This evolution marks a turning point in the rivalry between the two AI giants.
For Anthropic, long regarded as a mere challenger, this progress represents a real crowning achievement. In just a few months, its valuation has risen from around $380 billion to nearly $1 trillion.
This enthusiasm highlights investors’ exceptional interest in AI leaders. Many now believe that companies capable of dominating this market could become tomorrow’s tech giants.
However, this rapid growth also brings new challenges.
Victim of its success, Anthropic has faced several constraints related to computing power. The company has sometimes limited Claude’s usage to avoid saturating its infrastructure during periods of high demand.
The $65 billion fundraising aims precisely to address this issue. A significant portion of the funds will be devoted to increasing computing capacity and developing new infrastructure to support the company’s future growth.
Anthropic vs OpenAI: what investors should know?
Anthropic focuses on the enterprise sector, while OpenAI targets the general public
Since their inception, Claude and ChatGPT have followed two very different trajectories.
OpenAI built its growth around the general public. Through ChatGPT, the company has managed to establish its brand with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its model relies on high visibility, massive adoption, and a large-scale market conquest strategy.
This approach has helped it surpass 900 million weekly users. Conversely, it also implies substantial inference costs tied to daily model usage. A significant portion of this user base generates no direct revenue, which weighs on the company’s overall profitability.
Anthropic has adopted a radically different strategy. Since its inception, it has prioritized enterprises, developers, and professional use cases. Claude was designed as a productivity tool intended to be integrated directly into business processes rather than as a consumer-facing conversational assistant.
This positioning might have seemed risky given ChatGPT’s popularity. Yet it has proven to be financially effective.
By the end of 2025, Anthropic reported roughly $9 billion in recurring annual revenue. Just three months later, that figure had already surpassed $30 billion, driven mainly by demand from businesses and developers.
As Anthropic stated: “International companies across all sectors are deploying Claude at the heart of their operations, and more people around the world are using it in their daily work. Since our Series G fundraising in February, its adoption among our international professional clients has continued to grow.”
The partnership signed with KPMG on May 19, 2026 perfectly illustrates this dynamic. The consulting firm officially launched “KPMG Digital Gateway Powered by Claude,” a platform integrating Anthropic’s capabilities directly into its global services.
The 276,000 KPMG employees now have full access to Claude’s AI tools. This large-scale adoption comes after several years of gradual deployment within the group’s consulting, data analytics, and innovation teams.
KPMG is by no means an isolated case. Anthropic now claims more than 300,000 active professional clients across many sectors.
For investors, this difference in business model is far from insignificant. Enterprise contracts typically offer more predictable revenues, longer engagement durations, and higher margins than consumer subscriptions.
While OpenAI remains heavily dependent on the engagement of millions of individual users, Anthropic is progressively becoming embedded in the operational infrastructure of large organizations, which could strengthen its revenue recurrence.
OpenAI vs Anthropic annual revenue by segment
Anthropic surpasses OpenAI in AI coding, fueling record growth
In only sixteen months, Anthropic’s ARR rose from about $1 billion at the start of 2025 to nearly $47 billion by May 2026, according to CNBC. Such a progression places Anthropic among the fastest-growing tech companies in recent history.
Unlike OpenAI, whose growth is spread across several consumer and professional products, Anthropic has benefited from a particularly powerful growth engine: Claude Code.
Launched in May 2025, this AI-powered software development assistant rapidly became indispensable in enterprises. Three months after its launch, ARR surpassed $500 million. Nine months later, it reached $2.5 billion.
Few AI-powered productivity tools have achieved such rapid adoption. This success translated into a dramatic upswing in the AI-powered coding segment.
According to Menlo Ventures, Anthropic held 54% of the enterprise AI coding market by the end of 2025, against 21% for OpenAI. In other words, Claude Code alone accounted for more than double OpenAI’s share in this particularly strategic segment.
The company could also generate nearly $10.9 billion in revenue in Q2 2026 according to CNBC. If this target is achieved, Anthropic would post its first profitable quarter, following a solid first quarter with $4.8 billion in revenue.
The comparison with OpenAI is particularly telling.
OpenAI achieved rapid growth by lifting its annualized revenue to more than $25 billion in early 2026. Nevertheless, Anthropic reached an ARR of $47 billion in just sixteen months, at a pace even faster than OpenAI.
Where OpenAI retains a strong lead with the general public thanks to ChatGPT, Anthropic appears progressively to be establishing itself as the leader in AI-assisted coding for enterprises—a high-value market that could become a major growth driver for the sector in the years to come.
Universal distribution for Claude across the three largest clouds, versus a strategic dependence on Microsoft for OpenAI
One of Anthropic’s main competitive advantages today lies in its distribution strategy.
Claude has become the first leading AI model to be simultaneously available on the three largest global cloud platforms: AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Microsoft Azure Foundry.
This multi-cloud presence is a substantial strategic advantage in a sector where most players remain heavily dependent on a single partner. While AWS remains the primary infrastructure provider and Anthropic’s preferred partner for training its models, the company benefits from rare commercial flexibility.
Client companies can integrate Claude directly into their existing cloud environment, without altering their IT architecture or switching providers. This approach lowers adoption barriers and facilitates large-scale deployments.
OpenAI’s strategy appears more centralized.
Despite ChatGPT’s global success and rapid revenue growth, OpenAI remains closely tied to Microsoft. Azure is its primary technology partner, main infrastructure provider, and principal distribution channel to businesses.
This relationship has played a decisive role in OpenAI’s ascent. The billions invested by Microsoft have accelerated the development of ChatGPT and GPT models.
However, this dependence also creates a form of strategic concentration. Much of OpenAI’s growth today hinges on a single cloud ecosystem.
Anthropic adopts a different logic, more akin to large professional software vendors. The goal is to be present wherever customers are, rather than favoring a single platform.
As companies seek to diversify their infrastructures and avoid over-reliance on one supplier, this neutrality could become a major competitive advantage.
In an industry where model quality is no longer the only differentiating factor, the ability to effectively distribute technology becomes a determining element. On this front, Anthropic has a rare edge thanks to its presence on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Anthropic’s IPO: should you participate in Claude’s IPO? ActivTrades’ View
For ActivTrades, Anthropic stands among the most promising companies in the AI revolution. In just a few years, the company has progressed from a startup focused on AI model security to a direct competitor of OpenAI with a valuation approaching $1 trillion.
Anthropic benefits from rapid growth, strong enterprise exposure, a dominant position in AI-powered coding thanks to Claude Code, and privileged access to the three largest cloud platforms. Added to that are profitability prospects faster than those of many sector peers.
Compared to an OpenAI IPO, Anthropic’s offering features several characteristics that could attract investors. The company is currently growing faster, with revenues more concentrated in professional use, a lesser reliance on a single cloud provider, and comparatively lower valuation multiples relative to its revenue.
These advantages could help Anthropic better capture the value created by widespread AI adoption in businesses over the coming years. However, investing in Anthropic’s IPO carries significant risks.
With a valuation near $965 billion even before its IPO, much of the future growth potential seems already priced in. To justify such a valuation, Anthropic would need to sustain an extraordinary growth rate for several years while maintaining its technological edge in a highly competitive environment.
The recent history of IPOs also warrants caution. A Reuters analysis of the 50 most valuable IPOs over the last five years shows that nearly three-quarters of them underperformed the S&P 500 over the long term. Investors who buy into the exuberance of the first trading days often see even more disappointing performance.
The risk is even greater in the AI sector, where valuations are often fueled by optimistic expectations, a strong FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) sentiment, and growth projections that can be hard to sustain in the long term.
Ultimately, Anthropic likely possesses some of the strongest fundamentals in the AI space and could become one of the big winners of the global digital transformation. Yet, its record valuation, intense competition, massive capital needs, and the inherently speculative nature of the sector require investors to think carefully before investing in Anthropic’s stock.
ActivTrades’ tip for investing in the Anthropic IPO:
“For profiles able to tolerate high volatility and with a long investment horizon, the Anthropic IPO could present an attractive opportunity. For more prudent investors looking to gain exposure to the AI theme with a more moderate risk level, established stocks such as Microsoft, ASML, Nvidia, or Amazon could also be interesting alternatives. It may also be possible to invest in Anthropic through AI-focused ETFs.”
7 reasons to participate in Anthropic’s IPO
- A rare path to profitability in the AI universe
Anthropic could become one of the first major AI players to achieve operational profitability. The company aims for its first quarterly profit in Q2 2026, supported by a revenue target of $10.9 billion. - Premier institutional validation
The latest $65 billion Series H included some of the world’s most influential investors, such as Blackstone, Fidelity, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. This confidence sends a strong signal ahead of a potential IPO. - A major strategic partnership with Amazon
Beyond financial investments, Amazon provides Anthropic with substantial computing power via the Rainier project and gives it access to AWS’s vast professional client base through Bedrock. - A unique presence on the three major clouds worldwide
Claude is currently the only leading AI model distributed simultaneously on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. This multi-cloud presence is a significant competitive advantage with large enterprises. - Hypergrowth driven by enterprise customers
Anthropic’s ARR jumped from about $1 billion to $47 billion in sixteen months. This growth is primarily fueled by businesses, a segment typically more profitable and predictable than the consumer market. - More attractive valuation multiples than some peers
With a valuation near $965 billion for an ARR of $47 billion, Anthropic trades at multiples lower than OpenAI according to several private market estimates: around 20x sales versus nearly 40x for OpenAI. - Direct exposure to major technology mega-trends
Cloud computing, automation, generative AI, AI-assisted software development, and digital transformation: Anthropic sits at the crossroads of several megatrends likely to sustain growth for years to come.
6 reasons not to participate in Anthropic’s IPO
- Extremely high valuation with unaudited financials
Even after its remarkable growth, Anthropic remains valued on highly ambitious expectations. Any disappointment could trigger a significant drop in Anthropic’s stock price. Moreover, the numbers currently disclosed mainly come from the private market. Investors will have to wait for the S-1 filing to obtain a complete and audited view of the financial situation. - Critical geopolitical and regulatory risk (Pentagon case)
Since February 2026, the U.S. Department of Defense has classified Anthropic as a “supply chain risk.” This unprecedented legal designation for an American tech company creates major uncertainty about future public contracts, governance, and financial performance. - Significant co-dependency on Amazon
Even though the multi-cloud strategy mitigates some risks, Amazon remains a central partner for Anthropic. The relationship creates a concentration risk. Anthropic depends on Amazon for its cloud infrastructure, 5 GW of computing power, and part of its commercial distribution, while Amazon uses Anthropic as a showcase for its chips and cloud services, tightly linking the two companies’ fates. - Intense competition
The large language model (LLM) market is hyper-competitive and requires ongoing substantial capital. Anthropic faces direct rivals with almost unlimited resources like OpenAI, Google, Meta, as well as rapid advances in open-source models and Chinese players. - A sector heavily influenced by speculation
The AI industry exhibits strong volatility tied to market expectations. A slowdown in private investments or a waning overall interest in these technologies could quickly deflate Anthropic’s valuation multiples. - Regulatory, energy and societal challenges
The enormous energy footprint of training the company’s models, combined with societal concerns about AI’s impact on employment, creates local tensions. Opposition to data centers projects, notably in the United States, poses a concrete operational hurdle to building the infrastructure required for Anthropic’s growth.
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Quelques questions sur l’IPO Anthropic ?
As with any IPO, Anthropic’s IPO carries significant risks. However, several factors make this deal particularly sensitive. Valued at $965 billion, the company is “priced for perfection,” leaving little margin of safety for investors. Moreover, its current valuation assumes that the Claude AI remains ahead technologically, a leadership that is far from guaranteed in a rapidly evolving sector. There is also substantial legal uncertainty related to the ongoing litigation with the Pentagon, which could heavily impact future revenues. Finally, like many high-growth tech stocks, Anthropic’s stock could experience significant volatility in the early days of trading.
Before the IPO, direct access to Anthropic shares is very limited for retail investors. Private company shares trade mainly on private secondary markets typically reserved for professional or accredited investors. In practice, only a few individuals can access them. Regarding the IPO itself, shares offered at the issue price are most often allocated to large institutional investors, partner banks, and some privileged clients of financial intermediaries.
For the majority of retail investors, the first day of trading is therefore usually the first accessible entry point. Another option is to gain indirect exposure to Anthropic through partner companies or AI-focused ETFs. If the IPO materializes, numerous thematic funds could quickly add the stock to their portfolios. Investors should nevertheless stay attentive to early trading day movements, a period often marked by high volatility.
Before any investment decision, it will be essential to wait for the SEC’s S-1 filing. This document will provide access to the company’s audited financial statements, margins, cash flows, shareholding structure, and the main risks identified by management.
Investors will also need to analyze several key indicators and determine Anthropic’s ability to sustain its current growth; the evolution of its profitability; its level of dependence on Amazon and cloud providers; its capacity to maintain its lead in AI-assisted coding; and the evolution of AI regulation.
Beyond the company’s fundamentals, the decision to invest in Anthropic’s IPO will also depend on your risk profile. Anthropic represents primarily a growth stock. This type of investment is generally suited to investors who can tolerate high volatility and have a sufficiently long investment horizon to support the company’s development.
As with any highly publicized IPO, it is often best to avoid decisions driven by market euphoria. For investors convinced of the long-term potential of artificial intelligence, Anthropic could become one of the sector’s most important companies in the coming decade. That does not, however, mean that its stock trajectory will be linear, nor that its current valuation guarantees a future performance adequate to sustain its stock price.
