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Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the Claude family of large language models, has made its first significant move toward Wall Street.

On Monday, the company announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its common stock, News.Az reports, citing Investing.com.

The filing represents a watershed moment for the tech industry, potentially paving the way for one of the most highly anticipated public debuts of the generative AI era. While the exact number of shares to be offered and the proposed price range have not yet been determined, the confidential filing gives Anthropic the flexibility to launch its IPO once the SEC completes its standard review process. The company noted that the final decision to go public will depend heavily on market conditions and other strategic factors.

Anthropic has raised billions of dollars in private markets, securing massive investments from tech titans including Amazon and Google. These partnerships provided the immense computing power necessary to train frontier AI models. An IPO would not only provide Anthropic with a massive influx of public capital to continue funding its computationally expensive research, but it would also offer liquidity to its early investors and employees.

The company last raised $65 billion at a post-money valuation of $965 billion in late May. This staggering figure more than doubled the company’s previous valuation of $380 billion from February, when it raised a then-historic $30 billion in a single funding round. This rapid financial escalation officially puts the maker of the Claude chatbot ahead of rival OpenAI as the most valuable private AI company in the world.

Anthropic’s filing comes on the heels of SpaceX’s mega-IPO, which is currently on course to rewrite the record books as the Elon Musk-led aerospace and AI company pursues a $75 billion offering at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Adding to the wave of blockbuster listings anticipated in the year ahead, rival OpenAI is also preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. IPO in the coming weeks, ensuring that the foundational models driving the generative AI era will soon be available to public market investors.

Wall Street has been eagerly awaiting a pure-play generative AI foundational model company to test the public markets. Since the AI boom kicked into high gear in late 2022, investors have largely had to play the AI trend through megacap tech stocks, semiconductor giants like Nvidia, or enterprise software companies integrating AI into their existing products. Anthropic’s public debut would offer a direct investment vehicle into a leading frontier AI lab.

As the SEC begins its review, the tech and financial worlds will be watching closely to see when—and at what valuation—Anthropic decides to officially ring the opening bell.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli