Anthropic Races OpenAI as It Preps a Mega IPO

Anthropic is taking early-but-consequential steps toward a potential IPO that could arrive as soon as 2026. It’s a timeline that, if it holds, would put one of the most important generative AI vendors used across financial services onto public-market footing ahead of rival OpenAI.

For banks, payments processors and FinTechs racing to operationalize AI for fraud, compliance, customer service and developer productivity, an Anthropic listing would also be a referendum on whether public investors will fund the soaring compute costs behind “frontier” models.

According to the Financial Times, Anthropic has tapped law firm Wilson Sonsini “to begin work on one of the largest initial public offerings ever,” with the company “in talks for a private funding round” that would value it above $300 billion. The FT reported the company has also held preliminary, informal conversations with large investment banks about a potential flotation, though it is not close to selecting underwriters. Wilson Sonsini has advised Anthropic since 2022, including on commercial aspects of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar investments, the FT said.

The backdrop is a public-market test of massive, lossmaking AI research labs whose growth — and training costs — are difficult to forecast. The FT noted that IPO ambitions are colliding with unprecedented private-market valuations: OpenAI was valued at $500 billion in October, while Anthropic’s expected funding round is pegged between $300 billion and $350 billion and includes a reported $15 billion commitment from Microsoft and Nvidia. Anthropic has been working through internal go-public readiness items and hired former Airbnb executive Krishna Rao as CFO last year, the FT added.

An Anthropic spokesperson told the FT: “It’s fairly standard practice for companies operating at our scale and revenue level to effectively operate as if they are publicly traded companies.”

PYMNTS’ recent Anthropic coverage has tracked the company’s push into regulated financial workflows: the launch of Claude for Financial Services with verified data sources and audit trails; subsequent finance-focused updates including an Excel add-in and market-data connectors; and broader monetization and scaling signals, from premium subscriptions to major fundraises, rising valuations and enterprise productivity features (like creating spreadsheets and documents inside Claude). PYMNTS has also covered reporting that Anthropic could reach profitability sooner than OpenAI, a key lens investors will apply if IPO preparations accelerate.