Anthropic moves toward public listing amid AI spending debate

Anthropic is taking steps toward a public listing by filing confidentially for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). The move follows a private funding round. According to multiple investors, the company’s recent $65 billion fundraise, which valued the company at $965 billion, was oversubscribed. Alongside the IPO filing, the company disclosed growth in its top-line metrics, though it faces ongoing questions from the broader business community regarding the returns on artificial intelligence spending.

To break down the company’s current financial position:

• Fundraise: $65 billion, which was oversubscribed at a $965 billion valuation.
• Annualized revenue: Crossed $47 billion in May, representing an increase from roughly $9 billion in revenue recorded at the end of 2025.
• Compute costs: $1.25 billion per month paid to partner xAI for computational capacity.

Speaking on Thursday at the Bloomberg Tech conference, Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei explained that the transition to public markets is driven by the capital requirements of the sector. “My guess is that over time, the sort of core set of companies that are working to advance the frontier are just going to need access to capital, and I think the public market is very well suited to that,” Amodei said. She noted that training models and serving inference on them requires a very large upfront cost. Addressing concerns that corporations could begin to rein in their AI budgets—with companies like Uber questioning the productivity of some AI spending—Amodei suggested that businesses are still in the early stages of learning how to deploy these tools. She expects that day-to-day integration into workflows like coding, financial services, legal, and health care will continue to drive efficiency and realize more value over time.

To manage its growing computational needs, Anthropic has adopted a strategy that avoids building its own data centers. Instead, the company partnered with xAI last month to secure compute capacity. This arrangement was disclosed in an S-1 (an SEC filing document) filed by SpaceX, which revealed the partnership costs Anthropic $1.25 billion per month. Amodei stated that Anthropic’s approach is to plan for positive outcomes without overextending or purchasing more compute than it can productively use. She added that because predicting demand perfectly is difficult, the company prefers to have slightly more demand for its products than it can immediately serve, rather than holding excess capacity.

Why it matters

Anthropic’s move toward a public listing signals continued investor appetite for AI companies, even as broader corporate concerns about AI returns and compute costs persist.