ETFs in Focus as Anthropic Eyes IPO: A Blockbuster on the Way?

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AI firm Anthropic is exploring plans to go public as early as October, according to sources familiar with the matter, per Bloomberg, as quoted on Yahoo Finance. The move comes as the firm competes with another AI company, OpenAI, which is preparing for a public market debut as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, per CNBC.

The company — best known for its Claude chatbot — has begun preliminary discussions with major investment banks regarding the listing, per the abovementioned source.

The IPO could raise more than $60 billion (per Information, as quoted on the abovementioned Bloomberg article), though plans remain under discussion. None of the involved parties has officially confirmed details.

Developing and training AI models is extremely costly, which explains the need to raise funds. Note that Anthropic and OpenAI (the maker of ChatGPT) are in direct competition with behemoths like Google, which has plans to spend up to $185 billion this year in capital expenditures, and is investing heavily in its Gemini products, as mentioned on CNBC.

Anthropic generates about 80% of its business from enterprises, CEO Dario Amodei told CNBC recently. The company’s main AI coding tool, Claude Code, which can automate parts of the software development process, is the reason behind its popularity among enterprises.

Claude Code’s annualized revenues have increased to $2.5 billion, and business subscriptions have quadrupled since the start of the year, Anthropic said in mid-February. Enterprise users make up more than half of Claude Code’s revenues, as quoted on CNBC. The success is so strong that Anthropic’s revenue run-rate doubled in India in just four months, per Reuters, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.

Anthropic was recently valued at $380 billion following a $30 billion funding round in February 2026. It was the second-biggest private financing round on record for tech, following OpenAI’s raise of over $40 billion last year, as quoted on CNBC.

The company has secured strategic partnerships with tech giants, including Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and NVIDIA. The company has also committed to investing $50 billion in building custom data centers across the United States, per the abovementioned Bloomberg source.

Anthropic has also projected that its main product, Claude, could make $70 billion in sales by 2028, per The Information, as quoted on Financial Times. That would put its potential valuation at about five times the 2028 amount.

By comparison, Meta Platforms’ IPO was at about 6X forward sales, Alibaba Group at about 7X, and Palantir Technologies at about 10X, per Financial Times. The FT article went on to explain that OpenAI is valued at about $500 billion – also about 5X its projected 2028 revenues.

The abovementioned valuation comparison indicates that a potential Anthropic IPO will likely be a hit among investors, if not the best one. OpenAI may also receive great success, or even greater, due to its more diversified business exposure, per FT.

Against this backdrop, one needs to keep a close tab on IPO ETFs like Renaissance IPO ETF IPO.

In fact, REX Shares plnas to launch 2x leveraged exchange-traded funds tied to yet-to-be-issued ‌publicly traded common stock of Anthropic, according to regulatory filings, as quoted on Reuters. The T-Rex 2x Long Anthropic Daily Target ETF will aim to give holders twice the daily ???performance of the company, once it hits the market.

Other AI ETFs like Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF AIQ and Roundhill Generative AI & Technology ETF CHAT may also keep the stock in their kitties. So, these ETFs should be tracked closely (read: Stay Invested Despite Market Chaos With These ETFs).

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Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO): ETF Research Reports

Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ): ETF Research Reports

This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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