Anthropic's path from AI startup to industry-defining IPO
- Updated
Anthropic's logo and a rising stock graph appear in this illustration made on June 11, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
- Dado Ruvic
People visit an Anthropic booth at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, U.S., on September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
- Carlos Barria
October 26 (Reuters) - Anthropic announced on Monday that it had filed paperwork to sell shares to the public. This brings the company closer to what could be the first stock market listing by a leading AI research company. The filing explains the technology's potential, but also shows the risks and high costs of building it.
Here is a look at the steps leading to the planned stock market listing:
May 2021:
Anthropic, led by brother and sister Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, announced that it had raised $124 million in its first major funding round, called Series A. Technology investor and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn led the round.
April 2022:
Anthropic raised $580 million in a Series B funding round.
March 2023:
The company released Claude, a large language model that competes directly with products from OpenAI.
May 2023:
Anthropic raised $450 million from investors, including Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Spark Capital.
September 2023:
Amazon.com announced plans to invest up to $4 billion in cash in Anthropic.
October 2023:
Alphabet's Google agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic.
March 2024:
Anthropic introduced a group of AI models called Claude 3. The company said its most powerful model in the group, Claude 3 Opus, performed better on several tests than competing models GPT-4 from OpenAI and Gemini 1.0 Ultra from Google.
August 2024:
Three authors filed a group lawsuit against Anthropic in a federal court in California. They said the company had wrongly used their books, along with hundreds of thousands of other books, to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
November 2024:
Amazon.com invested another $4 billion in Anthropic.
March 2025:
Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company was valued at $61.5 billion after the new investment.
September 2025:
Anthropic's value rose to $183 billion after it raised $13 billion in a new funding round.
September 2025:
Anthropic introduced Claude 4.5. The company said the new AI model could write code for longer periods without stopping and do a better job with finance and science tasks.
February 2026:
The company raised $30 billion in a funding round. This more than doubled the value of the maker of the Claude chatbot to $380 billion.
February 2026:
U.S. President Donald Trump said he was directing government agencies to stop working with Anthropic. The Pentagon said it would label the startup a supply-chain risk.
March 2026:
Anthropic filed a lawsuit to stop the Pentagon from putting it on a national security blacklist. This increased the stakes in its dispute with the U.S. military over limits on how its technology could be used.
April 2026:
Anthropic introduced Mythos, its most advanced AI model at that time. It had advanced capabilities and was designed to help defend computer systems against cyberattacks.
May 2026:
Anthropic announced that it had raised $65 billion, giving it a value of $965 billion after the funding round.
June 2026:
Anthropic privately filed paperwork for a U.S. stock market listing. This put it ahead of rival OpenAI in a closely watched race to sell shares to the public.
July 2026:
A federal judge in San Francisco approved Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a group lawsuit brought by authors who accused the company of wrongly using their books to train its Claude AI chatbot.
August 2026:
Independent music publisher Round Hill Music sued Anthropic and Suno in a federal court in California. It accused the AI companies of wrongly using hundreds of its songs to train their systems.
August 2026:
Anthropic expects its revenue in 2028 to reach about $190 billion to $200 billion, Reuters reported, citing sources.
August 2026:
Anthropic's annual revenue run rate was above $65 billion by the end of July, Reuters reported, citing a source. The annual revenue run rate estimates how much a company would earn over a year if its current pace of revenue continued.
October 2026:
Reuters reported, citing sources, that some current investors in Anthropic and people considering investing in its upcoming stock market listing were thinking about valuing the AI company at less than previously expected. This followed the release of its latest financial information.
October 2026:
Anthropic said it was planning one of the largest stock market listings in history. It plans to list as a public benefit corporation, a type of company that must balance making profits with serving the wider public interest.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Subhranshu Sahu)