Anthropic, which is a leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI) frontier models, is expected to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in November, raising up to $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation.
This will make it the biggest IPO ever, exceeding SpaceX (SPCX), which initially raised $75 billion in its public offering earlier this year.
“I do think there will be a bit of hype and frenzy around the name, given that it will be the first major generative AI pure play to come to market,” says Avery Marquez, director of Investment Strategies at Renaissance Capital, a provider of pre-IPO research and IPO-focused ETFs. “We have seen investors be discerning this year, but I don’t think there will be a question of demand for Anthropic’s story.”
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Still, investors will need to weigh Anthropic’s explosive growth against its massive infrastructure spending, fierce competition, safety risk and lofty valuation before deciding whether to buy the IPO.
The story of Anthropic’s growth machine
Dario and Daniela Amodei cofounded Anthropic in January 2021. Before this, they served as executives at OpenAI. The siblings saw an opportunity to build a company focused on AI models that emphasized safety and reliability.
During its first few years, Anthropic concentrated on research and development. Then, in March 2023, the company released Claude, a sophisticated AI chatbot. It competed with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard (which eventually became Gemini).
Anthropic initially received less attention than its competitors, but that changed in May 2025, when the company released Claude Code. It was an instant hit with software developers. A key differentiator was the system’s use of AI agents, which could handle complex development tasks, navigate software repositories, generate and modify of code, debug applications, run tests and manage changes.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Building on these capabilities, Anthropic launched Claude Cowork in early 2026. This enabled agentic capabilities across various categories, including finance, sales and legal. Cowork also included extensive security systems such as identity and access controls, auditing, usage management, and regulatory protections, including HIPAA.
As a result, Anthropic experienced a surge in demand from enterprise customers. In February 2026, the company announced that the annual run-rate for revenue was $14 billion, compared to zero three years earlier. More than 500 customers spent more than $1 million.
At the end of July, Anthropic’s annualized revenue hit $65 billion and could reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of this year.
The risks of investing in Anthropic
While the growth is impressive, Anthropic faces major risks.
First, the company has signed agreements for at least $518 billion in AI infrastructure spending for the next decade. About 80% of these commitments are non-cancelable.
This is a huge bet that demand for AI services will keep growing at a rapid pace. But several signs suggest customers are having difficulties monetizing their investments. A survey from the Boston Consulting Group found that fewer than half of companies are generating meaningful value from AI, even as spending on the technology has nearly doubled over the past year.
It’s no surprise, then, that customers are looking for more affordable models, including open-source options.
There are also safety risks. In September, Anthropic disclosed several incidents in which its AI models accessed real-world systems without authorization during cybersecurity evaluations. In one case, its Claude Mythos 5 model uploaded malicious software to a public repository, which was installed on 15 external systems. While these incidents occurred in misconfigured testing environments, they highlight the potential dangers of increasingly autonomous AI systems.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“Frontier AI still carries significant technical, governance and deployment uncertainty, so the question is whether these companies can meet public-market expectations without letting quarterly pressure outrun the systems needed to deploy safely and reliably,” says Afsheen Afshar, founder and managing partner at Pilot Wave Holdings.
When is the Anthropic IPO?
On October, 26, Anthropic released its S-1 registration statement, which provided detailed financial results, risk factors and other disclosures.
While no exact date has been given yet for the offering, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules stipulate that a company must file its S-1 paperwork at least 15 days before its IPO roadshow. This suggests the Anthropic IPO will happen by mid-November
According to the filing, Anthropic plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ANT.”
Should you buy the Anthropic IPO?
“An initial public offering enables a private company to ‘go public,’ or start trading in public markets, by issuing its own shares on a stock exchange for the first time. In this way, any investor can buy shares and the company can raise capital to grow,” Taulli writes in his article, “What Is an Initial Public Offering (IPO)?“.
But buyer beware: IPOs can be volatile — especially for retail investors. And in the “froth and frenzy, opportunities mix with peril,” writes David Milstead, senior associate editor at the Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine. “The safest course may be to wait for companies to settle in some months after their debut, after one or two quarterly earnings reports.”
As for retail investors, whether or not you buy the Anthropic IPO comes down to your own risk tolerance and personal investing goals. If you do decide to buy shares of ANT stock when they first begin trading, do so in a small amount that you can afford to lose and have a trading plan in place.