Anthropic Is Moving Toward a Mega-IPO. Then It Could Reshape the AI Investment Race.

Anthropic is taking another major step toward what could become one of the largest technology initial public offerings in history, with Wall Street banks beginning meetings between the artificial intelligence startup's executives and potential investors ahead of a planned stock market debut.

According to CNBC, bankers leading Anthropic's IPO preparations have started arranging meetings with institutional investors to gauge demand before a formal roadshow and eventual share sale. The discussions indicate that the company's plans to go public are moving forward after it confidentially filed its registration paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month.

While the company has not announced an official timeline, Bloomberg reported the company could debut on public markets as early as October, though those plans remain subject to change. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment to CNBC on the preparations.

The investor meetings mark a significant milestone in the IPO process. Before companies officially market shares to investors, underwriting banks often conduct informal conversations to assess appetite, valuation expectations and potential demand. In Anthropic's case, the effort is being led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, three of Wall Street's largest investment banks.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives and researchers, Anthropic has rapidly emerged as one of the industry's leading AI developers. The company was created after several employees left OpenAI over disagreements about the organization's direction and governance.

Its coding assistant, Claude Code, has become particularly popular with software developers for coding and businesses looking to automate programming tasks while emphasizing safety and reliability.

The company has also become one of Silicon Valley's most valuable startups. In May, Anthropic completed a funding round that valued the company at approximately $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI's reported $852 billion valuation for the first time. The enormous valuation reflects investors' growing confidence in Anthropic's commercial prospects as businesses increasingly adopt AI tools across industries.

An IPO would also represent another milestone for the broader artificial intelligence sector, which has attracted unprecedented levels of investment over the past several years. Despite the excitement surrounding AI, many of the industry's biggest names have remained privately held while raising hundreds of billions of dollars from venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds and strategic investors.

Anthropic now appears positioned to beat OpenAI to the public markets but OpenAI also confidentially filed paperwork for an IPO with the SEC in June, but the ChatGPT developer has not provided additional details about its timeline.