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Anthropic could soon join SpaceX in what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest IPO waves in recent memory. With valuations measured in trillions, these aren't ordinary IPOs. They're big enough that index providers and ETF managers are already changing the rulebook.
Artificial intelligence has quietly become part of everyday life. Whether you're asking a chatbot a question, unlocking your phone with your ātaahua face, 😗 or using Google Maps to avoid traffic, there's a good chance AI is working behind the scenes. Companies like Anthropic are building the technology that powers many of these experiences.
What you need to know:
- Anthropic has filed to go public – The company submitted a confidential draft registration to the SEC on June 1 2026, and filed its Form S-1 IPO prospectus on October 26 2026.
- The ticker for Anthropic is (ANT) - you can watchlist it on Hatch now.
- IPO Date – Is expected to be mid-November 2026.
- In May 2026 Anthropic had a valuation of US$965 billion.
- Some of the company’s investors expect it to hit a US$2 trillion valuation, bigger than SpaceX’s recent US$1.77 trillion IPO
- Anthropic Newsroom – Check here for official S-1 filings and announcements.
We’ll update this article as new info becomes available, but in the meantime, here's what you should know.
What is Anthropic? 🎓
Anthropic is an artificial intelligence company. Its main product is Claude, a large language model (LLM) that can help with writing, coding, research, and all the usual AI assistant stuff… but with a stronger focus on being predictable and safe to use.
Back in 2020, seven senior OpenAI execs and researchers walked out over differences in vision for what AI should be. In 2021, they launched Anthropic, building AI with a stronger focus on safety and ethics.
By April 2026, Anthropic had pulled slightly ahead of OpenAI in enterprise adoption, with 34.4% of companies paying for its tools vs 32.3% for OpenAI. Claude is now used by hundreds of thousands of organisations, including Deloitte, Salesforce (CRM), and JPMorgan (JPM).
When is the Anthropic IPO?
The Anthropic IPO is expected to happen mid-November 2026. Timing for an IPO depends on things like regulatory reviews and market conditions. Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the SEC on 1 June 2026, and then publicly filed its IPO prospectus on 26 October 2026. In the case of SpaceX (SPCX), it filed a confidential draft registration on 1 April, then the IPO took place just over ten weeks later on 12 June.
After a confidential filing is submitted, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reviews the document and gives feedback. Anthropic will have to address any issues that the SEC finds before moving ahead with the IPO. Submitting an IPO prospectus is a sign that an IPO is getting closer. It makes Anthropic’s plans public and gives prospective investors their first official look at the company’s financials, risks and plans for the offering. There are still a few boxes to tick though, including finalising the number of shares and price range, so the IPO date isn’t locked in just yet.
If you were investing back in 2019, you might remember the WeWork IPO that never was. Its public filing put the company under a much brighter spotlight, revealing huge losses, governance concerns and conflicts of interest. Investors didn’t like what they saw, and WeWork eventually pulled its IPO.
Read more: SpaceX goes public
Can I invest in Anthropic before the IPO?
No. You can’t buy Anthropic shares directly yet — it’s a private company. Be wary of anyone claiming otherwise. Some funds and ETFs do hold Anthropic shares through private equity holdings, but this isn’t the same as owning the individual stock.
How can an ETF hold a private company? Under SEC Rule 22e-4 ETFS can allocate up to 15% of their holdings to ‘illiquid’ assets like private companies, startups, physical real estate, and fine art. So yes, you can invest in an ETF that holds Anthropic, but it will usually be a small allocation, and your investment won’t reflect the value of Anthropic alone.
For example, as of October 2026 KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF (AGIX) and iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF (BAI) hold direct stakes in Anthropic.
Companies tied to Anthropic that can indirectly give you exposure include:
- Amazon (AMZN) – Major backer and infrastructure partner
- Alphabet (GOOGL) – Investor, provides infrastructure
- Microsoft (MSFT) – Investor, Claude uses Azure to scale
- Nvidia (NVDA) – Strategic partner, provides architecture
Investing in these companies is not the same as owning Anthropic shares, it is investing in the ecosystem that the company depends on.
Why is Anthropic worth so much?
At first glance, Anthropic's valuation can seem tricky to justify on current financials alone. The company is just five years old, yet some investors think it could be worth around US$2 trillion when it goes public. In May 2026, it was valued at US$965 billion. Even at that lower valuation it would rank among the top 25 largest companies in the world by market capitalisation.
Much of Anthropic's valuation is based on future growth, both for the company and AI itself. Revenue is rising fast, enterprise adoption is accelerating, and some investors believe AI could become as essential as the internet or cloud computing. If they're right, today's valuation reflects the size of the opportunity ahead, not just the company as it stands today.
Critics take a different view. They argue valuations have run ahead of fundamentals, and that expectations for future AI growth may already be priced in. That's one reason newly listed companies can see price swings after an IPO.
How does Anthropic make money?
Anthropic makes money selling access to Claude, its LLM (large language model). Every time a user asks Claude a question, they're consuming tokens, which cost different amounts depending on the model of Claude being used.
Asking Claude, ‘What are the biggest risks in my portfolio?’ might generate about 3,000 tokens, costing around 1.4 US cents. Less than the PayWave surcharge on your flat white.
Now multiply 1.4 cents by millions of people asking ‘why don’t pillow cases have zips?’, and ‘who let the dogs out?’ Those random shower thoughts start to add up quickly. Anthropic generated roughly US$10 billion of revenue in all of 2025. Growth has accelerated rapidly since then. By Q2 2026 alone, the company reportedly generated more than US$11.5 billion of revenue.
The real opportunity for Anthropic is in business settings, where companies can run thousands of AI-powered tasks every day across customer service, research, software development, and internal operations. Enterprise customers have become a major driver of Anthropic’s growth, and this is what some analysts see as the winning strategy for companies in the AI race.
As of May 2026, Anthropic said its revenue had reached a US$47 billion annualised run rate. An annualised run rate asks a simple question: ‘If the company kept generating revenue at today's pace for the next 12 months, how much would it make?’ Investors often look at annualised revenue because they're trying to estimate where a fast-growing business is heading, not just where it was last year.
What are the risks to investing in Anthropic?
‘There are four things that we would like any investor in Anthropic to understand: the incredible potential of AI, the risks we must address, Anthropic's unique approach to building a company and operating in the world, and the ways in which our behavior may differ from that of a purely profit-maximizing company.’
Anthropic's prospectus dedicates roughly 90 pages to risks, that’s a lot to digest over your morning coffee. Before buying shares in a company, investors need to understand the risks involved, and decide if it aligns with their risk appetite, and investment goals. We recommend that you pour yourself a big cup and take a read of the prospectus but here are some things we noticed that you may want to think about.
AI moves fast. New AI models and capabilities are emerging in a matter of months, not years. Anthropic faces intense competition, and there’s no guarantee Claude will remain at the technological frontier. Falling behind could mean losing customers and revenue, and that ground may be difficult to claw back.
Claude has a very hungry engine. Anthropic needs huge and growing amounts of computing power, or ‘compute’, to train its models and serve customers. In the first half of 2026, compute and infrastructure made up around 52% of Anthropic’s total operating expenses. It generally has to commit to compute capacity well in advance, so getting the forecast wrong in either direction could leave Anthropic without enough computing power, or paying for capacity it doesn’t use.
AI safety is a business risk too. Anthropic warns that its models could be misused, its safety measures could fail, or its AI could behave in unintended ways. At the same time, being cautious can have a cost: Anthropic has previously delayed or restricted model releases for safety reasons, and says doing so could leave it moving more slowly than competitors.
Shareholders won't necessarily be calling the shots. Anthropic's co-founders collectively hold significant voting control through a special class of shares, while its Long-Term Benefit Trust generally gets to elect a majority of the board. Anthropic itself warns that the structure may effectively eliminate Class A shareholders' ability to influence some important decisions.
Could Anthropic eventually join major index funds, like SpaceX did?
Possibly, but whether Anthropic is included, and how quickly, depends on the rules of each index. Following its IPO, SpaceX (SPCX) was rapidly added to several major indexes, triggering automatic buying by ETFs and index funds. Could Anthropic follow the same path?
If Anthropic completes an IPO at anything close to its reported valuation, it would immediately become one of the largest companies on the US sharemarket. Market cap is an important factor in a company being added to an index, so the rumoured US$2T valuation could make Anthropic a strong candidate for inclusion in some major indexes (as long as it meets other requirements too).
✅ Nasdaq
Historically, Nasdaq required at least 10% of a company's shares to be available for public trading before it could join the Nasdaq-100. In 2026, Nasdaq relaxed those rules to allow mega-IPOs such as SpaceX and potentially Anthropic to be added sooner, even when founders and early investors still control most of the company.
✅ FTSE Russell
FTSE Russell, part of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) introduced an IPO Fast Entry rule in 2026 that allows eligible mega-IPOs to be added after just five trading days. It also relaxed its 5% minimum float and voting-rights requirements for certain large listings, as long as the float is expected to exceed those thresholds within 12 months
✅ CRSP (used by Vanguard's VTI and other funds)
CRSP also updated its methodology in 2026 to make it easier for mega-IPOs to qualify for inclusion. Instead of focusing heavily on the percentage of shares available to the public, it now places more emphasis on the total dollar value of those publicly traded shares.
❌ S&P 500
The S&P 500 reviewed its rules but kept existing criteria requiring newly listed companies to trade publicly for about 12 months before becoming eligible for inclusion. It also kept stricter profitability requirements, meaning Anthropic may need to wait longer for S&P 500 inclusion than it would for some other indexes.
The takeaway: Even if you never buy Anthropic shares directly, there's a good chance you'll eventually own a slice of the company through ETFs and index funds. Thanks to recent rule changes, investors may gain exposure to Anthropic through ETFs and index funds far sooner than they would have for many past IPOs.
What to consider before investing in IPOs
An initial public offering (IPO) is a company’s first sale of shares to the public. New shares are created and sold to raise money. There can be lots of uncertainty surrounding IPOs, and share prices can change rapidly, so it pays to understand how the IPO process works before deciding to invest.
📰 We’ve covered a lot of initial public offerings in our newsletter over the years. Read about what happened during recent initial public offerings to get a feel for how the share markets could react.
We’re not financial advisors and Hatch news is for your information only. However dazzling our writing, none of it is a recommendation to invest in any of the companies or funds mentioned. If you want support before making any investment decisions, consider seeking financial advice from a licensed provider. We’ve done our best to ensure all information is current when we pushed ‘publish’ on this article. And of course, with investing, your money isn’t guaranteed to grow and there’s always a risk you might lose money.
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