Anthropic to Begin Investor Meetings for Potential October IPO

Anthropic wants to meet with prospective investors ahead of a potential initial public offering that could take place as soon as October, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (July 15).

Banks leading the offering are scheduling investor meetings in the coming weeks, according to the report, which cited unnamed sources. Anthropic and rival OpenAI have confidentially filed for IPOs, but Anthropic is expected to list first after OpenAI pushed its target debut to 2027.

If completed this fall, the listing would also precede a planned IPO by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, highlighting how AI companies are increasingly turning to public markets to finance the enormous computing costs required to train and deploy frontier models. DeepSeek is preparing for its own IPO after growing annualized revenue to between $400 million and $500 million.

Anthropic enters the public markets from a position of strength. The company was valued at $965 billion following a May funding round, making it one of the world’s most valuable private companies and, for the first time, surpassing OpenAI’s reported valuation, the Bloomberg report said. The company has benefited from growing enterprise demand for Claude, particularly coding-focused AI tools that have become popular with software developers.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase are leading the planned offering, according to the report.

The listing would arrive as AI companies fuel a broader revival in equity capital markets. Companies have raised $227.5 billion through IPOs globally this year, excluding special-purpose acquisition companies and other financial vehicles, already making 2026 the strongest year for listings since 2021, the report said. AI companies have been a major driver of that rebound, with SpaceX and SK Hynix both citing AI opportunities as part of their public offerings.

Anthropic’s IPO preparations also highlight the divergent strategies among leading AI companies. OpenAI is considering delaying its IPO until 2027 because advisers fear volatility in technology stocks could weaken investor demand for new listings.

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