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Anthropic has begun laying the groundwork for a possible stock market listing as competition between artificial intelligence firms heats up.
That’s according to a report in the Financial Times which claims the company has appointed the Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini to advise on an eventual public offering.
Anthropic did not immediately reply to Euronews’ request for comment.
One FT source said the move could position the San Francisco-based group to pursue an IPO as early as 2026, although the company has made no commitment to going public and stressed that it has not set a timetable.
Anthropic, which is behind the Claude range of AI models, is currently raising new private funding that is expected to value the business well above $300 billion (€257.6bn).
The law firm’s involvement marks a notable shift for a company that until recently operated more like a research lab than a business preparing for public markets.
Anthropic has expanded its corporate structure over the past couple of years to meet surging interest in its AI technology. This included hiring former Airbnb executive Krishna Rao as chief financial officer.
The latest development comes amid intensifying competition among the leading developers of large AI models.
According to reports, OpenAI, valued at roughly $500bn (€429.27bn) in October, has also been assessing what a future listing might involve. It too has downplayed any immediate plans, and both groups are grappling with the difficulty of forecasting revenues in a rapidly shifting market.
OpenAI is refocusing efforts on improving ChatGPT after continuous bugs with its newest chatbot rollout, while Google and Anthropic have released new models that outperformed GPT-5 on several industry benchmarks.
Anthropic’s Opus 4.5 and Google’s Gemini 3 have been particularly strong in evaluations of reasoning and long-context performance, raising questions about how long OpenAI can maintain its early dominance.
Despite commanding hundreds of millions of weekly users, OpenAI faces pressure from competitors whose products are gaining traction.
Anthropic’s preparations, alongside OpenAI’s own internal work, suggest both companies are beginning to position themselves for the scrutiny that comes with public markets, even as they continue to warn that no listing is imminent.
The sector’s soaring valuations — and the unpredictable costs associated with building ever larger models — mean any IPO would test investor appetite for businesses whose growth depends on extraordinary levels of capital and computational scale.