Dec 2 (Reuters) – Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com, has hired law firm Wilson Sonsini to prepare an initial public offering that could take place as early as 2026, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
An initial public offering would give the company, which operates AI chatbot Claude, a more efficient way to “raise capital and provide leverage for larger acquisitions through public shares.” The move comes as AI adoption gains pace, driven by increased spending on enterprise technology and growing investor appetite.
An Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters the company has not decided when or even if it will go public.
The company previously turned to Wilson Sonsini for a variety of corporate matters. The law firm did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on the Financial Times report outside normal business hours.
Anthropic could be set to go public in 2026, according to the report. The startup has also discussed with major investment banks about a possible initial public offering (IPO), the newspaper reported, citing sources.
The Financial Times report says, however, that talks are in early stages and are informal, indicating that the company is “still far from selecting its IPO underwriters.”
Anthropic is negotiating a private financing round that could give the startup a valuation of more than $300 billion, the report added.
Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, projects to double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue rate to around $26 billion next year. It has more than 300,000 commercial and enterprise clients.
OpenAI, a major rival backed by Microsoft, is preparing for what could be among the largest IPOs in history, with a potential valuation of up to $1 trillion. The company is laying the groundwork to go public and could file with securities regulators as early as the second half of 2026, Reuters reported.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said later in November that a listing is not in the startup’s near-term plans.
Last month, Microsoft and Nvidia announced plans to invest up to $15 billion in Anthropic, as the artificial intelligence company committed $30 billion to use Microsoft’s cloud services.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic was recently valued at $183 billion.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Janane Venkatraman)