Anthropic’s Road to IPO: Funding, valuation, Claude growth and legal battles

Anthropic is moving closer to what could become one of the most closely watched initial public offerings in the artificial intelligence industry, as the Claude maker prepares to tap public markets after a rapid rise in funding, valuation and revenue, as per a report by Reuters.

The company, founded by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, has grown from a startup raising $124 million in 2021 into an AI company that was valued at $965 billion in May 2026. Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in June, according to the report.

Its IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, presents an ambitious view of artificial intelligence's potential economic impact, suggesting the technology could reshape the global economy on a scale exceeding previous technological transformations.

From startup to AI heavyweight

Anthropic's journey began in May 2021, when it announced a $124 million Series A funding round led by technology investor and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. The company followed that with a $580 million Series B round in April 2022.

In March 2023, Anthropic launched Claude, its large language model designed to compete with products from OpenAI and other major AI developers. The company raised another $450 million in May that year from investors including Google and Spark Capital.

Amazon emerged as another major backer in September 2023, announcing plans to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic. Google followed with an agreement to invest up to $2 billion in October.

The company expanded its model lineup in March 2024 with Claude 3. Anthropic said its most capable model at the time, Claude 3 Opus, outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini 1.0 Ultra on several benchmarks.

Rapid acceleration in funding and valuation

Anthropic's funding momentum accelerated sharply in 2024 and 2025. Amazon committed another $4 billion in November 2024, while the company raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation in March 2025 in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

By September 2025, Anthropic's post-money valuation had climbed to $183 billion following a $13 billion funding round.

The company also continued to advance its AI models. In September 2025, it unveiled Claude 4.5, highlighting improvements in coding and its ability to handle financial and scientific tasks.

In February 2026, Anthropic raised $30 billion in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380 billion.

That valuation was surpassed just months later. In May, Anthropic announced that it had raised $65 billion at a post-money valuation of $965 billion.

Revenue growth and IPO preparations

Anthropic's commercial growth has accelerated alongside its fundraising. Reuters reported in August that the company's annual revenue run rate had surpassed $65 billion by the end of July, compared with $47 billion in May and about $9 billion at the end of 2025.

The company is also projecting substantial future growth. Anthropic is forecasting revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028, as per the report.

Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in June 2026, putting it ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to become one of the first major frontier AI labs to access public markets, according to Reuters.

The scale of the potential listing has attracted considerable attention. Reuters reported earlier in September that Anthropic was discussing an IPO that could raise as much as $100 billion at a valuation of around $2 trillion, while Nvidia was considering a potential investment of up to $10 billion. Those discussions remain subject to change.

Legal and regulatory challenges

Anthropic's rapid expansion has taken place alongside legal disputes over the use of copyrighted material in AI training.

In August 2024, three authors filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court alleging that Anthropic had improperly used their books and hundreds of thousands of other works to train Claude.

A federal judge in San Francisco approved a landmark $1.5 billion settlement in July 2026 involving authors who accused Anthropic of misusing their books to train its AI system.

The legal issues have not ended. In August, independent music publisher Round Hill Music sued Anthropic and AI company Suno in California federal court, alleging that hundreds of its songs had been improperly used to train AI systems.

Clash with the U.S. government

Anthropic has also faced a dispute with the U.S. government over the use of its technology.

In February 2026, President Donald Trump said he was directing the government to stop work with Anthropic, while the Pentagon said it would designate the startup as a supply-chain risk.

The dispute escalated in March, when Anthropic sued to block the Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist.

The conflict adds another layer of uncertainty for a company whose technology is increasingly being developed for applications involving government and national-security work.

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Expanding AI capabilities

Anthropic has continued to expand its model capabilities despite the legal and regulatory challenges.

In April 2026, it introduced Mythos, describing it as its most advanced AI model at the time and positioning it for defensive cybersecurity applications.

The company's development of increasingly capable AI models has been accompanied by growing commercial demand and rising infrastructure requirements, adding importance to its relationships with major technology companies and cloud providers.

In September, Anthropic also secured an agreement with Akamai for $11.6 billion in cloud services over seven years, with the deal including a warrant that could give Anthropic up to a 5% stake in Akamai. Reuters reported that the agreement could expand by a further $9 billion.

A closely watched public-market test

Anthropic's potential IPO comes as investors grapple with both the extraordinary growth of AI companies and the enormous capital required to develop and operate increasingly powerful models.

The company's trajectory, from a $124 million funding round in 2021 to a $965 billion valuation in 2026, highlights the speed at which the frontier AI industry has developed.

Its prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, outlines an expansive vision for AI's role in the economy, while the company's projected revenue growth underscores the scale of expectations surrounding Claude.

Anthropic is also seeking to preserve significant founder influence as it approaches the public markets. Reuters reported that the company is pursuing a corporate structure under which its seven co-founders would collectively control 50.1% of voting power through a special class of shares.

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With rapidly rising revenue, massive funding rounds, legal disputes, government tensions and ambitious projections, Anthropic's IPO could provide public-market investors with an unusually detailed look at the economics and governance of a frontier AI company.

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