The news: Anthropic confidentially filed IPO paperwork on Monday, beating OpenAI to the punch and getting in line behind SpaceX's April IPO for what could be one of the biggest public offerings in recent years.

The announcement comes days after Anthropic closed a major funding round that pushed its value to $965 billion, making it the second-most-valuable private company in the world—once again ahead of OpenAI and behind only SpaceX.

Anthropic didn’t give a time frame for going public or offer details on the number of shares or stock price it will offer, stating in an announcement that the proposed IPO will “depend on market conditions and other factors."

The bigger picture: Anthropic, unlike other AI players like OpenAI and Google, has remained hyperfocused on enterprise users and coding pursuits, declining to venture into more diverse offerings like image generators, AI browsers, or shopping tools.

While this has allowed it to become a predominantly enterprise provider—80% of its business comes from those clients—it’s not a widely used consumer platform. We expect only 5.4% of US internet users will use Claude weekly in 2026, significantly behind ChatGPT (30%) and Gemini (21.8%).

Much of Anthropic’s recent funding, as well as what it would bring in from an IPO, is likely to be spent on compute to support user demand. That could help it develop new tech quickly and maintain an edge in coding tools in the face of growing competition from OpenAI’s Codex and as SpaceX looks to bolster its offering with Cursor.

Implications for marketers: The outcome of Anthropic’s IPO will illustrate whether the investor market values AI more as a consumer offering or an enterprise advantage. That could shape what AI innovation emerges next and support faster product development cycles around enterprise tools for advertising campaigns and marketing workflows.

A strong public-market appetite for Anthropic’s enterprise-first models may encourage other AI firms to prioritize business productivity and software integrations over consumer engagement.