Days after Anthropic saw its valuation soar past competitor OpenAI, the company has made a confidential filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for a possible IPO.
We may see the two top players in the AI industry both go public within a short time of one another, as the AI race continues to heat up. On Monday, Anthropic announced that it had made its initial registration filing with the SEC, laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that is still not yet guaranteed.
"This [filing] gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review," Anthropic said in a statement. "The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."
The announcement comes less than two weeks after we learned that OpenAI was preparing to make its own initial filing ahead of a potential IPO in September.
And, as the Associated Press reports, Anthropic's move toward its IPO comes just days after a new funding round, in which it raised $65 billion, pushed the company's valuation to $965 billion. Anthropic said, just five years into its existence, its annual revenue is now $47 billion, driven by the success of its Claude chatbot, and the Claude Code's ever-expanding ability to write code.
Anthropic's second-quarter earnings are reportedly on pace to be double what they were last year, at around $10.9 billion, which would make this the company's first profitable quarter to date, per the Wall Street Journal.
OpenAI's private valuation is estimated at $852 billion, as of Monday. There is no word on a possible date of an Anthropic IPO, and the company has made no statements about the number of shares that might be offered or a possible share price.
Anthropic was itself founded by a group of former OpenAI employees, including SF-born siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, in 2021. They now have 1,500 Bay Area employees, and have been in growth mode, as the Chronicle notes, growing to be the fourth-largest office lease holder in San Francisco, with around 1 million square feet so far.
**Previously: **Report: OpenAI Is About to File for an IPO Top image: Photo illustration by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images