The big test for AI is coming - Anthropic gears up to go public

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You have to remember three letters: ANT. It is under this symbol that Anthropic wishes to enter the Nasdaq, the American stock exchange which hosts a large number of tech giants. In a press release published this Monday, October 26, the creator of Claude announced that it had filed its S-1 form with the SEC, the American regulator of financial markets.

This document presents the company, its accounts and the risks to which its future shareholders are exposed. Its filing constitutes a step towards the IPO, but several boxes remain to be filled: neither the number of shares offered nor their price range are fixed. The press release also does not give a listing date, and the registration has not yet entered into force. For comparison, SpaceX began trading on the stock market on June 12, just 23 days after the public filing of its file on May 20. There is no guarantee, however, that Anthropic will follow the same schedule.

The announcement nevertheless opens a new sequence for American AI. After years of private fundraising, one of its main laboratories is preparing to submit its ambitions directly to the market.

Confining AI becomes a headache: after its 11-day break, OpenAI explains why cutting off the Internet is not enough After SpaceX, a bet much more focused on AI SpaceX's IPO last June had already broken a record: around 75 billion dollars (around 67 billion euros) raised, the largest IPO in history. But buying a share of Elon Musk's company meant betting on several activities at the same time: rockets, Starlink, the social network X and artificial intelligence, after the integration of xAI. AI was part of a much larger whole.

With Anthropic, the bet would be more direct. The value of the company depends on its ability to develop ever more efficient models and sell their use, particularly through Claude and its tools intended for businesses. Anthropic could thus become the first of the major American generative AI laboratories to enter the stock market alone, before OpenAI. However, this would not be a world first: the Chinese Zhipu and MiniMax have already been listed in Hong Kong since January.

The appetite for Anthropic shares did not wait for this deadline. In May, tokens issued on the Solana blockchain by the PreStocks platform, supposed to provide access to a share of Anthropic, reached $1,409 per unit (around 1,250 euros). At this price, the market unofficially valued Anthropic at around $1.4 trillion (around €1.25 trillion). Anthropic then recalled that it did not recognize transfers of shares carried out without its authorization. With the IPO, investors will be able to purchase shares recognized by Anthropic directly on the Nasdaq, within a regulated framework, with a public price and financial transparency obligations.

Machine-translated from French