Anthropic's path from AI startup to industry-defining IPO


FILE PHOTO: An Anthropic logo is displayed at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, US, September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

Sept 28 (Reuters) - Anthropic's IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, ⁠laid out a sweeping vision in which AI would reshape the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and ⁠the internet, as the Claude maker moved closer to what could be the first listing by a frontier ‌AI lab.

Here is a look at the road to the planned IPO:

May 2021:

Anthropic, led by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, announces it has raised $124 million in a Series A funding round led by technology investor and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.

April 2022:

Anthropic raises $580 million in a Series B funding round.

March 2023:

The company releases a ​large language model, Claude, that competes directly with offerings from OpenAI.

May 2023:

Anthropic raises $450 ⁠million from investors including Alphabet's Google and Spark Capital.

September ⁠2023:

Amazon.com announces it will invest up to $4 billion in cash in Anthropic.

October 2023:

Alphabet's Google agrees to invest up to $2 billion in ⁠Anthropic.

March ‌2024:

Anthropic reveals a suite of AI models known as Claude 3. The company says the most capable in the family, Claude 3 Opus, outperforms rival models GPT-4 from OpenAI and Gemini 1.0 Ultra from Google on various benchmarks.

August 2024:

Anthropic is hit ⁠with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say ​it misused their books and hundreds of ‌thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.

November 2024:

Amazon.com pumps another $4 billion into Anthropic.

March 2025:

Anthropic raises $3.5 billion at ⁠a $61.5 billion post-money valuation ​led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

September 2025:

Anthropic's valuation hits $183 billion post-money, after raising $13 billion in a new round.

September 2025:

Anthropic unveils the Claude 4.5 AI model, saying the newest version can code for longer uninterrupted stretches and handle finance and scientific tasks better.

February 2026:

The company raises $30 billion in a funding round, ⁠more than doubling the Claude chatbot maker's valuation to $380 billion.

February 2026:

U.S. President Donald ​Trump says he is directing the government to stop work with Anthropic, while the Pentagon said it would declare the startup a supply-chain risk.

March 2026:

Anthropic files a lawsuit to block the Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist, escalating the AI lab's high-stakes battle ⁠with the U.S. military over usage restrictions on its technology.

April 2026:

Anthropic debuts Mythos, its most advanced AI model to date, equipped with sophisticated capabilities and designed for defensive cybersecurity tasks.

May 2026:

Anthropic announces it has raised $65 billion at a post-money valuation of $965 billion.

June 2026:

Anthropic confidentially files for a U.S. IPO, edging ahead of rival OpenAI in a closely watched race to reach public markets.

July 2026:

A federal judge ​in San Francisco signs off on Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by ⁠a group of authors who accused it of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot Claude.

August 2026:

Independent music publisher Round Hill Music ​sues Anthropic and Suno in California federal court, alleging the AI companies misused ‌hundreds of its songs to train their systems.

August 2026:

Anthropic is projecting ​2028 revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion, Reuters reports, citing sources.

August 2026:

Anthropic's annual revenue run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, Reuters reports, citing a source.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Subhranshu Sahu)

Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel for breaking news alerts and key updates!

Others Also Read