Anthropic Accelerates IPO Plans in Bid to Overtake SpaceX

Anthropic is moving closer to Wall Street with an IPO that could raise about $100 billion and value the artificial intelligence company at nearly $2 trillion. If those figures materialize, it would become the largest initial public offering in history, overtaking the offering by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which raised $86 billion at a $1.78 trillion valuation in June.

The company is assembling a leading group of investment banks for the transaction as it seeks to move ahead of OpenAI, which is also working toward an IPO. Morgan Stanley is the leading candidate to run Anthropic’s offering, while Goldman Sachs is expected to act as stabilization agent, overseeing the first trading sessions after the listing. JPMorgan, Citigroup and Barclays are also expected to hold prominent roles after providing debt financing to the creator of Claude and Mythos, according to the Financial Times.

Anthropic is also close to expanding its revolving credit facility to $15 billion, clearing a hurdle before publicly filing for its long-awaited listing. Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley is leading that process alongside Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and UBS. Companies generally complete such credit facilities before formally notifying banks of their roles in a major capital-markets transaction.

The IPO preparations come as Anthropic highlights the rapid expansion of its operations. The company has signed computing-capacity contracts worth $517 billion over the past 11 months, The Information reported. Those agreements include 10-year contracts with Amazon and Google worth more than $300 billion, along with multibillion-dollar deals involving Microsoft, SpaceX and nScale. Last week, Anthropic also signed a $35 billion cloud-computing agreement with Nvidia-backed Lambda.

The offering will test investor appetite for the AI sector. Anthropic has faced disputes involving governments, banks and companies over the effects of its technology on cybersecurity. In a financing round completed last spring, it raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, moving ahead of OpenAI.