Anthropic Confidentially Files for IPO, Could Crack the Top 10 Most Valuable Companies

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With its $65 billion Series H round, Anthropic has reached a post-money valuation of $965 billion, overtaking rival OpenAI ($852 billion) for the first time. The round is regarded as likely the last private financing before an IPO that, according to consistent reports, is targeted for October 2026. With a confidential filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Claude maker has now kicked off the IPO process. Even today, the company led by CEO Dario Amodei would rank among the 12 most valuable listed companies in the world – but it could go much higher.

It is one of the most extreme repricings the private capital markets have ever seen: within roughly three months, the valuation of the Claude developer has more than doubled, from $380 billion to $965 billion. That puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI for the first time, after the ChatGPT maker was valued at $852 billion in its most recent round in March. When it comes to the amount raised, however, OpenAI still leads – with $122 billion in a single round versus Anthropic’s $65 billion.

The Road to the Stock Market

The Series H may be the last large financing round before Anthropic goes to the public markets. As early as late 2025, the company had engaged the law firm Wilson Sonsini to prepare for an IPO and held initial, informal talks with investment banks. Several media reports now point to October 2026 as a possible timing for the IPO – a quarter that would give Anthropic room to factor its Q3 2026 results into the pricing.

Anthropic enjoys a structural advantage over OpenAI here: while the ChatGPT provider must first complete its conversion from a non-profit into a for-profit structure, Anthropic has been set up from the start as a conventional company – albeit incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation. That gives the Claude developer a comparatively “clean” path to the stock market.

In a listing based on the current $965 billion, Anthropic would rank among the most valuable listed U.S. companies from its very first trading day – a remarkable mark for a company founded only in 2021.

Why the Valuation Rose So Quickly

The main driver of the repricing is revenue growth. Anthropic recently put its annualized revenue (run rate) at over $47 billion – a figure the company says was crossed at the beginning of the month. For comparison: at the start of 2025 the run rate still stood at around $1 billion, and in August 2025 at over $5 billion. The central growth engine is the enterprise business, led by the agentic coding tool Claude Code and the knowledge-work tool Cowork.

Measured against the run rate, the new valuation implies a revenue multiple of around 21 – an order of magnitude that the industry compares, for instance, to Nvidia’s forward multiple. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the company expects revenue to grow by roughly 130 percent and, with it, its first operating profit.

The Funding History at a Glance

Note: The valuations of the early rounds (Series A/B) are based in part on press estimates and were not officially confirmed in every case. The Series H was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital; the Series G by GIC and Coatue.

Striking is not only the pace but also the acceleration of the capital raised: from $3.5 billion (Series E) through $13 billion and $30 billion to $65 billion in the Series H. At the same time, the intervals between rounds shortened dramatically of late – from about a year (E → F) to just three and a half months (G → H).

An Extrapolation – to Be Taken with a Grain of Salt

What happens if you mechanically extend the most recent jumps? The two latest rounds produced the following multipliers:

• Series F → G (Sep. 2025 → Feb. 2026): $183B → $380B = roughly 2.1× in about five months
• Series G → H (Feb. → May 2026): $380B → $965B = roughly 2.5× in about three and a half months

Applying that dynamic to the period until a possible IPO in October 2026 (around five months after the Series H) yields – purely arithmetically:

• under a conservative doubling (2.0×): a valuation of around $1.9 trillion
• extending the most recent multiple (2.5×): around $2.4 trillion

What is interesting is that a second, entirely different calculation lands in a similar range: apply the company’s expected revenue increase of around 130 percent to the current run rate of $47 billion, and you arrive at a future run rate of just over $108 billion. At today’s revenue multiple of about 21, that would correspond to a valuation of around $2.3 trillion – near the upper end of the trend extrapolation.

Important: both figures are thought experiments, not forecasts. A doubling of the valuation every three to five months is mathematically unsustainable over time – it would catapult Anthropic, within just a few quarters, beyond the market capitalization of the largest tech corporations in the world. In practice, IPO pricing will hinge far more on realized revenue, margins and the absorptive capacity of the public market than on extrapolating a private valuation curve. The symbolic trillion-dollar threshold, from which Anthropic is only narrowly removed at $965 billion, is likely to fall before or with the IPO even at a markedly slower pace.

The Race Continues

Anthropic and OpenAI are thus locked in a contest on several levels at once – over valuation, capital, compute capacity and the timing of their respective IPOs. According to media reports, OpenAI is likewise targeting an IPO in the fourth quarter of 2026. While the ChatGPT provider leads on financing volume and on first-time access for retail investors, Anthropic has secured the higher valuation with the Series H and – by its own account – the higher annualized revenue level. Which of the two rivals goes public first, and at what price, is set to rank among the most closely watched financial events of the year.