Anthropic just gave Wall Street a number too big to ignore. The company behind the Claude chatbot is quietly preparing to go public. Bankers say the deal could value it at $2 trillion or more. That would make the Anthropic IPO the largest public offering in history. It would even top SpaceX’s blockbuster listing from June. Meanwhile, OpenAI is racing toward its own Wall Street moment. Both companies want the same prize. Each wants to prove that AI chatbots are worth more than almost anything else on the stock market today.
Why the Anthropic IPO Could Break Every Record
Anthropic has grown faster than almost any private company in history. Investors valued the startup at $183 billion in September 2025. By early 2026, that number nearly doubled to $380 billion. A funding round in July pushed it even higher, to $965 billion. Now bankers want near $2 trillion for an October listing. That is what Yahoo Finance reports. That price would match or beat SpaceX’s own record. SpaceX shares closed near $2.1 trillion on their first day of trading in June. So says Value Add VC. In short, the record for the biggest tech IPO ever could change hands twice in one year.
Target Valuation: $2 trillion or more.
Expected Timing: October 2026.
Most Recent Private Valuation: $965 billion, set in July 2026.
OpenAI’s Rival Target: $1 trillion or more by 2027.
Anthropic vs OpenAI: Who Goes Public First
OpenAI has its own path to Wall Street. It started months ago. The ChatGPT maker quietly filed IPO papers with the SEC back in June 2026. That is what Yahoo Finance reports. Chief executive Sam Altman wants a first-day price above $1 trillion. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told staff the company will go public in 2027. She added that OpenAI could move sooner if growth stays hot. So says 24/7 Wall St.
“We will be a public company in 2027. We may go sooner if the business continues to inflect.”
Sarah Friar, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer
Anthropic’s own timeline looks tighter. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the deal, says Value Add VC. JPMorgan is also one of the banks on it. Investors close to the deal expect shares to price as soon as October. That would put the Anthropic IPO ahead of OpenAI by more than a year.
The Revenue Numbers Fueling Both IPOs
Big price tags need big sales behind them. OpenAI‘s yearly sales pace grew 35 percent this quarter. Sales to business clients climbed even faster, up 50 percent. Its coding tool Codex also gained ground. It now has 20 million users, more than three times its earlier total. Anthropic tells a similar growth story. The company hit a $47 billion yearly sales pace in May 2026. Leaders expect that number to reach $100 billion to $120 billion by year end, says Value Add VC. Both firms still lose money as they spend heavily on chips and data centers. Sales growth this fast has convinced bankers those losses will not last.
The Catch: Businesses Are Choosing Cheaper AI Over Premium Models
Not everyone believes the growth will last. Anthropic released its most advanced model, Claude Fable 5, this summer. The company marketed it as the smartest AI on the market. Two months later, Fable 5 had won only about 11 percent of the spend on Ramp’s card platform for businesses. That is what the Financial Times found, per 24/7 Wall St. A cheaper model called Opus 5 passed Fable 5 in spend soon after its late July launch. That trend is bad news for Anthropic’s pitch to investors. The firm wants $200 billion in sales by 2028. That math needs each new model to cost more while firms keep paying up. If firms keep picking “good enough” and cheap instead, that goal gets much harder to hit.
“If premium-model demand weakens while the cost of developing frontier AI keeps rising, the path from $65 billion today to $200 billion in 2028 becomes much harder.”
24/7 Wall St., citing Financial Times reporting
What the Anthropic IPO Means for Regular People
Most people cannot buy shares before an IPO prices. So this fight will not change your bank account overnight. Still, it matters. A $2 trillion Anthropic IPO would make owning AI stock feel as normal as owning shares in a bank or an airline. It would also pressure OpenAI to move faster. A strong debut sets the price everyone else gets compared against. Wall Street already learned that lesson once this year. SpaceX priced its June IPO at $135 a share. It closed near a $2.1 trillion market cap that same day. Within six weeks, the stock had slid about 30 percent, says Value Add VC. Anthropic could follow the same path if the hype runs ahead of the real numbers. Either way, the next few months will decide who gets to call themselves the first trillion-dollar AI firm on the public market.
