(Credit: Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images)
Claude AI developer Anthropic is ready to go public.
In a Monday blog post, the company said it "confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of our common stock, [which] gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review."
Anthropic adds: "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors. The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set."
Filing confidentially allows Anthropic to shield sensitive financial information from the public and rival companies, Reuters reports.
As one of the largest beneficiaries of the world's pivot to AI over the past few years, Anthropic has grown quickly from a plucky startup into one of the world's most valuable companies. Following its latest fundraising efforts, Anthropic is currently valued at $965 billion, more than its top rival, OpenAI, at $852 billion.
This comes as Anthropic is set to have its first profitable quarter ever, The Wall Street Journal reports, helping propel its recent funding efforts and laying the ground for its IPO. However, as industry analyst Ed Zitron notes, Anthropic's accounting practices are far from uniform, and it may only be achieving profitability because SpaceX is giving it a multi-month discount on inferencing costs at its Colossus supercomputing facility.
SpaceX is also pursuing an IPO, and although SpaceX will compete for investment dollars with Anthropic, it's also possible the latter company will benefit from the hype around AI company valuations. Of course, if the appetite for AI ventures strains as the realities of AI deployment become more obvious—limited profitability and skyrocketing token costs—it's possible neither IPO reaches their intended goals.
Regardless, it won't stop major tech firms from pushing the narrative that AI is the future. Nvidia announced its RTX Spark platform at Computex, bringing AI-capable chips into consumer hardware such as laptops and desktops, in direct competition with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.