Anthropic Prepares for 2026 IPO at $350 Billion Valuation

Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude, is laying groundwork for what could become one of the largest tech IPOs in history. After securing $15 billion in combined investment from Microsoft and Nvidia, the company has engaged top Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to prepare for a potential 2026 public listing.

The move positions Anthropic in direct competition with OpenAI, which is reportedly planning its own IPO at valuations approaching $1 trillion.

The $350 Billion Valuation

Anthropic's private market valuation has skyrocketed following its November funding round:

• $350 billion — current valuation
• $183 billion — valuation earlier in 2025
• 91% increase — in less than a year

The valuation surge came from a landmark $15 billion investment deal:

• Nvidia committed $10 billion, including GPU hardware collaboration
• Microsoft committed $5 billion, along with a $30 billion Azure compute agreement

The Microsoft partnership includes Anthropic's commitment to purchase $30 billion in Azure cloud computing capacity and collaborate on optimizing Claude for Nvidia's next-generation GPU hardware.

Revenue Trajectory

Anthropic's financial growth has been explosive:

• 2025 (current) — ~$9 billion annualized revenue run rate
• 2026 (projected) — $20-26 billion annualized revenue
• Growth rate — 2-3x year-over-year

The company now serves over 300,000 business and enterprise customers, with Claude deployed across industries from software development to financial services.

IPO Preparations

Anthropic has begun assembling the infrastructure for a public company:

Legal Counsel: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati — the same firm that handled IPOs for Google, LinkedIn, and Lyft.

Finance Leadership: Krishna Rao, who played a key role in Airbnb's 2020 IPO, recently joined to build out financial operations.

Banking Discussions: Early conversations with major investment banks about underwriting, though no formal selection has been made.

An Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters the company "has not decided when or even if it will go public" — standard language for a company in early IPO preparation.

The OpenAI Race

Anthropic's IPO timeline puts it in direct competition with OpenAI for investor attention and public market capital:

OpenAI:

• Potential valuation up to $1 trillion
• Timeline: H2 2026
• Key backer: Microsoft

Anthropic:

• Current valuation: $350 billion
• Timeline: 2026
• Key backers: Microsoft, Nvidia, Google

Both companies are racing to establish dominance in enterprise AI before the other captures public market mindshare. The competitive dynamic is complicated by Microsoft's investments in both companies — though its OpenAI stake is significantly larger.

Strategic Positioning

Anthropic has differentiated itself through several factors:

AI Safety Focus: Founded by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic emphasizes "constitutional AI" and safety research. This positioning appeals to enterprises concerned about AI risk.

Claude's Performance: Claude Opus 4.5 currently leads several industry benchmarks, including an 80.9% score on SWE-bench Verified — outperforming both GPT-5.1 and Gemini 3 Pro.

Enterprise Traction: The company has secured major enterprise deployments, including partnerships across financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors.

Multi-Cloud Strategy: Unlike OpenAI's exclusive Microsoft relationship, Anthropic maintains partnerships with Google Cloud, Amazon (through Bedrock), and now Microsoft Azure — giving enterprises deployment flexibility.

Investor Considerations

A potential Anthropic IPO raises several questions:

Revenue Quality: How much revenue comes from a small number of large customers versus diversified enterprise adoption?

Profitability Path: AI companies face massive infrastructure costs. When does Anthropic expect to reach profitability?

Competitive Moat: With Google, Meta, and others releasing capable open-source models, what sustains Anthropic's pricing power?

Safety Premium: Will the market value Anthropic's safety-focused approach, or view it as a constraint on growth?

What's Next

The IPO timeline suggests Anthropic will spend 2025 focused on:

• Scaling enterprise revenue toward the $26 billion target
• Building public company infrastructure (audit, compliance, governance)
• Selecting underwriters and finalizing offering structure
• Potentially acquiring companies to strengthen its position

For the broader AI industry, Anthropic's public listing would provide the first real market test of how investors value a pure-play AI model company. OpenAI's valuation has existed only in private markets; public trading will impose the discipline of quarterly earnings and transparent financials.

The race to IPO is on. The winner may set the template for how AI companies are valued for years to come.