Anthropic, the company behind Claude, filed papers on Monday, October 26, 2026, for what could be the biggest initial public offering ever — ahead of rival OpenAI, which has pushed its own debut to next year. Reports citing the filing put the potential raise at as much as $100 billion, which would value Anthropic at between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion and eclipse the record set by SpaceX earlier this year.

The numbers in the filing explain why the market is paying attention — and why it is nervous. Revenue soared roughly 14-fold in the first half of 2026 to $16.3 billion, while the net loss widened to $80.7 billion, most of it on paper from convertible debt that rises in value as the company does. Computing costs nearly quadrupled to $8.9 billion, with hundreds of billions more committed over the next decade, against about $112 billion of cash on hand.

The filing is also unusually candid about risk: more than 90 pages warn of dangers ranging from AI systems manipulating people or evading monitoring to conflicts with the US administration and existential threats from advanced AI. That candour is part of the story — Anthropic is asking public investors to fund the most capital-hungry buildout in tech while telling them, in its own prospectus, how it could go wrong.

For AI tool users, the IPO matters for a practical reason: a public Anthropic will report revenue, spending and pricing discipline quarterly, and its backers stand to gain enormously. Amazon could hold up to around 20% if it converts its bonds, and Google holds about 7% with room to invest more. If the debut lands well, expect OpenAI to follow; if it stumbles, expect the whole AI trade to reprice. Either way, the era of frontier labs funded quietly in private is ending.

Sources