Anthropic Starts Investor Meetings as It Targets IPO as Early as October

AI startup aims to join this year’s listing wave with an offering as soon as October

Company would reach public markets ahead of OpenAI and DeepSeek

Anthropic, the developer of the Claude artificial intelligence model, has begun arranging meetings with institutional investors ahead of an initial public offering, as it seeks to join a wave of AI listings.

Bloomberg reported on July 16 that the banks leading the IPO are setting up meetings between Anthropic and investors in the coming weeks. Bloomberg had previously reported that Anthropic is preparing for an IPO in October.

Some in the AI industry favor listing sooner rather than later amid concerns that enthusiasm for the sector could fade on bubble and valuation worries. If the offering proceeds, Anthropic would reach the stock market before rival OpenAI. OpenAI had initially aimed to go public this fall, but has recently pushed that timeline back to 2027, according to reports. Both companies have already confidentially filed for listing with US securities regulators.

An autumn listing would also put Anthropic ahead of China’s DeepSeek, which has been rapidly expanding its share of the AI market. DeepSeek is also preparing for an IPO and could submit documents equivalent to a preliminary listing review as early as this year, according to reports.

Anthropic has moved ahead with listing plans after posting steep revenue growth on rising demand for AI models. Its coding-assistant AI tools, which automate parts of the software development process, have been particularly well received.

Political uncertainty remains. The Trump administration at one point imposed measures restricting overseas access to Anthropic’s core AI models. Anthropic also sued after the US Department of Defense designated the company as a risk factor in the US supply chain.

Anthropic has selected Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan as joint lead underwriters for the IPO. People familiar with the matter said the company was valued at $96.5 billion in its May fundraising round, the first time it had surpassed OpenAI.

The AI boom has also fueled the IPO market this year. Companies have raised a combined $227.5 billion through IPOs this year, excluding special purpose acquisition companies and other financial products, according to Bloomberg data. That is already the largest total since 2021, even with more than half the year still remaining.

SpaceX, which completed the largest IPO on record in June, also highlighted AI as a central investment theme. The company laid out a plan to capture the AI infrastructure market, which it estimates at about $26.5 trillion, by building space-based data centers.

SK Hynix, which listed American depositary receipts in the US last week, is another prominent beneficiary of the AI investment boom. Its US listing was the third-largest on record, driven by expectations for stronger demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, as investment in AI infrastructure expands.

Park Shin-young, New York correspondent, Hankyung.com, nyusos@hankyung.com