Anthropic, one of OpenAI's main competitors in the field of generative artificial intelligence, is in the early stages of preparations for an initial public offering (IPO). It is expected to launch a listing next year, and its scale may rank among the large technology IPOs. The company has hired Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, an American law firm with experience in listing technology companies, which has participated in the IPO projects of well-known companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Lyft. In addition, Anthropic also brought in Krishna Rao, a former executive who led Airbnb’s 2020 listing process, to strengthen the company’s professional capabilities in capital market operations.
According to the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, Anthropic’s internal preparations for a potential listing have begun and preliminary and informal contacts have been made with a number of large investment banks regarding IPO matters. However, key information including the specific issuance schedule, valuation range and underwriting lineup have not yet been finalized. The report pointed out that the market generally expects that with the help of IPO fundraising, Anthropic is expected to obtain considerable funds for subsequent investment in computing power, model development and business expansion.
The so-called IPO means that a company transforms from an unlisted privately held company into a public company and opens its shares to ordinary investors for trading in order to raise development funds from the public market. For Anthropic, after listing, it can raise a large amount of capital through the issuance of new shares, which will be used to expand computing infrastructure, improve the Claude series model, and expand enterprise and consumer product lines. But along with this, the company needs to continue to prove profitability and growth potential to shareholders, which will make it face stronger performance pressure on product pricing and functional strategies.
From a user perspective, the financial growth pressure brought about by listing may push Anthropic to adjust its business model in the medium to long term, such as transferring more features to the paid tier, raising subscription prices, or setting more usage restrictions on some services currently available for free to improve revenue and profit performance. Such changes have precedents in other listed software and cloud service companies, so the market is generally concerned about how Anthropic will balance between "open availability" and "profit requirements" in the future.
The IPO rumors also add to the competitive tension with OpenAI. The market has previously speculated that OpenAI is also evaluating its path to the public market. Once Anthropic is the first to complete its IPO, it may seize a certain advantage in terms of financial strength and capital market narrative, thereby gaining a more proactive position in computing power procurement, talent introduction, and ecological cooperation. At present, OpenAI is still regarded as the first company to bring large-scale language models into the public eye, but Anthropic is quickly closing the gap with its Claude series models and cooperation with many large technology companies.
However, even if it successfully lands in the capital market, whether Anthropic can smoothly transition from the current high investment and high cash-burning model to sustainable profitability is still an open question. It is currently unclear to what extent the issue price range, valuation level and investor expectations for its long-term cash flow and profit performance at the time of listing will reflect confidence in the business prospects of the AI industry. Analysts believe that if Anthropic can successfully raise large-scale funds through IPO and efficiently translate it into product competitiveness and market share improvement, its possibility of "overtaking" OpenAI at the financial level will be significantly improved, but this still needs time and market verification.