Anthropic is planning to unveil its IPO prospectus after Labor Day, with a potential listing in late September or early October, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the process.
The startup confidentially filed for a public listing earlier this year, as it races with rival OpenAI to their market debuts amid strong investor appetite for AI firms.
- Anthropic is considering allowing existing shareholders to sell shares as part of its IPO and weighing lockup periods longer than the customary 180 days, according to the Information report.
- Allowing secondary stock sales in the IPO would distinguish Anthropic from this year's other big tech listings, SpaceX and Cerebras which didn't have existing stockholders sell shares in the IPOs.
- SpaceX's first lockup expiry earlier this month more than doubled its publicly traded shares, with another 12.9 billion shares scheduled to be unlocked by mid-2027 under its staggered schedule.
- Anthropic, which has already raised at least US$130 billion to support its intensive compute demands, is expected to surpass the US$86 billion raised by SpaceX in its June IPO, the report said.
- It was not clear how much of Anthropic's offering would consist of newly issued shares versus sales by existing holders.
- The company has separately considered requiring rank-and-file employees to sell shares through preset 10b5-1 trading plans rather than the typical post-earnings selling windows, according to the Information.
- Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Reuters