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Wall Street is gearing up for Anthropic’s expected mega initial public offering, a major test of investors’ appetite for one of the AI industry’s leading firms. Just weeks ago, its CEO called for an industry-wide slowdown over growing safety concerns.
The IPO could take place as soon as November, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic’s IPO has been highly anticipated after the company announced in June that it confidentially filed to go public.
Anthropic could raise as much as $100 billion in an IPO that would value the company at around $2 trillion, according to the Journal. The seismic sums would vault Anthropic into the top 10 most valuable companies in the world.
Anthropic’s IPO would mark a major milestone in the AI boom that has enveloped markets in recent years. But the journey to the IPO has been messy, and there have been delays.
Anthropic’s plans have been muddled by questions about AI regulation and safety risks. Former employees, as well as CEO Dario Amodei, have raised concerns in recent weeks, spurring an industry-wide call to slow down AI development to better manage risks. Tech leaders, including Amodei, signed an accord at the White House last week to “self-police” the development of AI.
Meanwhile, the outlook for all potential IPOs has grown complicated in recent months.
The market has grown more uncertain as interest rates are on the rise. Bond yields have surged in recent weeks, pushing up borrowing costs, as traders adjust to the Iran war energy shock and central banks raising rates.
Some companies have gotten cold feet. Oura, a tech company that makes wearable health tracking rings, said it would go public this fall before announcing last week that it would delay its debut due to market uncertainty. Holtec Nuclear, an energy company, also recently suspended its planned IPO, citing poor sentiment impacting the stock market. And OpenAI announced it would delay its IPO until next year because of AI safety concerns.
“You’ve got rising rates. You’ve got the war in Iran. You’ve got the sort of shakier economy ex-AI,” Heath Terry, head of AI investment research at Citi, told CNN. “I think that’s what’s sort of created uncertainty.”
“IPOs need a stable market environment, they need positive investor sentiment, and with that sort of unstable broader economic landscape, that makes it a lot more difficult,” Terry said, speaking broadly about IPOs and not specific companies.
Still, Anthropic is reportedly moving forward with its plans to go public while it raises capital. Should Anthropic raise $100 billion and debut at a valuation of around $2 trillion, it would surpass SpaceX’s IPO as the largest ever. SpaceX ultimately raised roughly $86 billion in its IPO and debuted at a $1.77 trillion valuation, partly due to visions for its own role in AI.
The mega-sized SpaceX IPO trounced previous public offerings, with Saudi Aramco a distant No. 2, after it raised roughly $29 billion in 2019.
“SpaceX was such an outlier — the world’s biggest IPO ever, by far. And it’s very possible that they’ll be in second place (roughly) a month from now,” said Jay Ritter, professor emeritus at the University of Florida.
To be sure, the risk of AI taking over the world has been discussed for years. But scrutiny intensified in recent weeks after multiple incidents of AI agents going rogue and trying to hack into other systems.
Reuters last week obtained a copy of Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, which has yet to be released, and reported that it includes warnings that the company’s AI model could potentially cause a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity.”
While tech leaders have agreed to self-police, Anthropic is still expected to grow its business and compete with rivals like OpenAI. Heightened safety concerns would exist whether the company went public or not, experts told CNN.
Higher interest rates can also depress valuations for stocks and put a chill on the IPO market. But waiting to go public doesn’t guarantee interest rates will fall, and for a company that’s hungry for cash like Anthropic, going public can still make sense, said analysts and Ritter, the professor emeritus at the University of Florida.
Delaying an IPO indefinitely also carries the risk that market conditions get worse, or other unforeseen challenges arise, and it becomes more difficult to get back on track toward an IPO. At the same time, the Nasdaq Composite is currently trading near a record high, which is a positive scenario for a tech IPO.
“You can’t really ever time an IPO to eliminate all future uncertainty with respect to your company and your product,” Jill E. Fisch, professor of business law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, told CNN.
“I don’t think there’s a magic line for any company in terms of, ‘Yes, now we’ve crossed the threshold, we’ve solved all of the safety issues, and now we can go forward with 100% confidence.’ I don’t think it really works that way,” Fisch said.
Anthropic and OpenAI are in a heated race to produce advanced AI models, and the companies are burning billions in cash to advance research and development. Anthropic lost $42 billion in 2025 and plans to spend north of $500 billion on computing and infrastructure in the coming years, according to Reuters.
However, the company reportedly told investors that it will be profitable for a second straight quarter this year, according to the Financial Times. Anthropic builds its revenue by renting out advanced models of its Claude bot to major businesses.
Angelo Zino, tech analyst at CFRA Research, said that while the market conditions might not be conducive to every company’s plans to go public, he thinks Anthropic is in a league of its own. He cited strong signs of demand for its products and a path to profitability despite the company’s enormous capital spending.
“I think there’s going to be a very strong appetite and demand for Anthropic,” Zino said.
AI has been the central theme propelling the stock market to record highs in recent years. At its stratospheric valuation, Anthropic is asking investors to believe in its ability to continue monetizing its AI services and expand its market share.
“If the company executes its business model, it’s going to do fine,” said Ritter, the professor emeritus at the University of Florida. “But you know, a lot of times things don’t work out.”
