Sources: Anthropic taps law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin work on its IPO, which could come as soon as 2026, and held preliminary talks with big investment banks
AI start-up picks law firm Wilson Sonsini for what could be one of the largest public offerings ever
Financial TimesGeorge Hammond
Context & Ripple Effects
This is an early operational step in Anthropic’s path toward a listing: legal preparation is paired with initial outreach to major banks. Later coverage in the same arc moves from planning to a confidential IPO filing, while a separate report says its bankers brought in Freshfields for UK IPO advice.
The timing also places Anthropic alongside an emerging peer race to public-market readiness, after OpenAI selected legal advisers for its own potential listing. The key significance is not a completed offering, but the start of the legal and banking work needed to make one possible.
First-order effects
Anthropic begins formal IPO preparation with Wilson Sonsini, creating an immediate legal workstream around a potential public listing.
Preliminary talks give major investment banks an opening to compete for roles on a potentially significant Anthropic transaction.
Second-order effects
Bank competition for Anthropic’s mandate can intensify as the company’s IPO planning becomes more concrete, while advisers must coordinate across the legal and underwriting process.
OpenAI’s parallel legal preparations raise the prospect that investors, banks, and advisers will assess multiple large AI listings on overlapping timelines.
Third-order effects
If these preparations culminate in listings, leading AI labs could gain a more durable public-market funding route alongside private capital—a core feature of Anthropic’s later filing process.
The pattern points toward AI infrastructure finance becoming more closely tied to public-equity access, though the timing and terms of any offering remain uncertain.
The trend: Frontier AI companies are building the legal and banking infrastructure to turn capital-intensive private growth into public-market financing.
Anthropic isn't racing OpenAI to go public. The math shows something different. Anthropic just raised at $350B and is targeting a $300-350B IPO. That's zero markup. OpenAI raised at $300-500B and is targeting $1T. That's a 2-3x jump. When you IPO at the same price you just
The OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs are going to be insane. “The start-up, led by chief executive Dario Amodei, had also discussed a potential IPO with big investment banks, according to multiple people with knowledge of those talks” https://www.ft.com/...
Anthropic is targeting a 2026 IPO and is already in discussions for a new funding round that would value it above $300B. This is shaping up to be one of the largest public listings in market history [image]
I will certainly own Anthropic stock Zhipu will probably IPO next year Minimax, Moonshot, OpenAI, and Anthropic will probably IPO in the 2027-2029 window Lots of foundation model labs will be available
(FT) - Anthropic has tapped law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin work on one of the largest initial public offerings ever, which could come as soon as 2026, as the artificial intelligence start-up races OpenAI to the public market. — @financialtimes.com — www.ft.com/content/3254.…
One thing separating the dot com boom from the AI bubble has been a comparative lack of dazzling IPOs. OpenAI and Anthropic are in a race to go first — the latter has just hired lawyers for the effort. Great @georgehammond.bsky.social scoop www.ft.com/content/3254...