Anthropic co-founder says soaring AI costs are pushing the company toward an IPO

Building the future of artificial intelligence is expensive. Like, nearly-a-trillion-dollar-valuation expensive.

Anthropic co-founder and President Daniela Amodei made the case plainly at the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, telling attendees that the sheer cost of developing and serving AI models is forcing frontier labs to look beyond private fundraising. The comments land just weeks after Anthropic confidentially filed draft S-1 paperwork with the SEC around June 1, 2026, setting the stage for what could be one of the most consequential tech IPOs in years.

“It’s a very capital-intensive business to train AI models.”

A $965 billion valuation and counting

Anthropic is not exactly strapped for cash right now. The company closed a staggering $65 billion funding round in May 2026, achieving a post-money valuation of $965 billion. For context, that surpasses OpenAI’s previous valuation and puts Anthropic in rarefied air occupied by only a handful of companies on the planet.

The potential IPO could arrive as early as fall 2026, though that timeline hinges on market conditions and regulatory approval from the SEC.

Founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei alongside other former OpenAI researchers, the company has built its reputation on the Claude family of AI models and a stated emphasis on AI safety.

A wave of AI IPOs in 2026

Anthropic isn’t alone in eyeing public markets. OpenAI and SpaceX are also reportedly considering IPOs in 2026, driven by similarly voracious capital requirements.

What this means for investors

An Anthropic IPO would create one of the first opportunities for public market investors to get direct exposure to a frontier AI lab. Until now, the most significant AI bets have been filtered through proxy investments: buying Nvidia for the chips, Microsoft for its OpenAI partnership, or Alphabet for its DeepMind division.

But the risks are real. Anthropic’s $965 billion valuation means the stock would need to justify an enormous price tag from day one. Revenue figures, which haven’t been publicly disclosed in detail, would face intense scrutiny. Investors would want to see a credible path from “capital-intensive research lab” to “profitable technology company.”

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