Startups

Anthropic Targets IPO to Match or Top SpaceX's $75 Billion Record, Public Filing Eyed for End of August

The Claude maker is running the numbers on a mega-listing that would eclipse the biggest first-time share sale ever, with Citigroup joining Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan on the deal.

By Giulia Donatello · Startups & funding · 2026-08-21 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Aditya Vyas — New York Stock Exchange building facade with American flags

Anthropic is preparing to file publicly for an IPO that its bankers expect to match or beat the $75 billion SpaceX raised at its debut, according to people familiar with the matter reported by Bloomberg, with a public S-1 landing as soon as the end of August. SpaceX’s overallotment took the final proceeds to $86.2 billion, per data compiled by Bloomberg, the ceiling Anthropic is now sizing itself against.

The Claude maker has already confidentially submitted its draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the SEC, Quartz reported. Citigroup is being added to a bookrunning group that already includes Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Citigroup currently sits atop Bloomberg’s US IPO league table for 2026, and it was part of the syndicate that extended Anthropic a $2.5 billion revolving credit line last year, a facility the company is now targeting to expand to roughly $10 billion.

The financials do most of the persuasion. Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion by the end of July, more than a sevenfold jump from its pace at the end of last year, Bloomberg reported. The Financial Times has said backers expect that figure to land between $100 billion and $120 billion by year-end. In May, a fresh round pushed the private valuation to $965 billion.

Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao has, per Bloomberg, skirted the valuation question in recent investor briefings, and the FT reports senior executives haven’t set an internal target even in private conversations. Investors are being left to build their own models off the growth curve. It’s a familiar move from the Google 2004 playbook, where refusing to anchor a number let demand write the price.

That silence is the story. OpenAI has pushed its own listing to 2027; Anthropic, by moving first, gets to define what an AI-era mega-IPO looks like before anyone else sets the comp. Whether the market clears at SpaceX size or above it, the frame is already in place.

Sources