Anthropic has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the SEC, putting the AI company on a path toward a potential public offering — and igniting what Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is calling a full-on race to Wall Street.

The filing does not set a share count, does not constitute an offer to sell securities and depends on SEC review, market conditions and other factors.

But the move is significant: Anthropic is looking to get ahead of rival OpenAI, which is preparing its own confidential filing, even as SpaceX — which submitted its S-1 on May 20 — heads into its roadshow this week.

'Opening of the Floodgates'

“This represents an opening of the floodgates for the IPO market, which has been relatively dormant for a few years,” Ives wrote, noting that all three companies are targeting public listings in 2026.

The timing is backed by explosive financial momentum. Anthropic raised $65 billion in a new Series H round, vaulting its valuation from $380 billion — following a prior $30 billion raise — to $965 billion.

Revenue has surged just as fast: the company reported a $47 billion annual revenue run rate as of May 28, up from $30 billion earlier this year and $10 billion in ARR at the end of last year.

Product velocity matches the financial story. Claude just launched Opus 4.8, which runs at 2.5x the speed of prior models and costs 3x less.

Ives flagged the model’s reliability improvements: Opus 4.8 is trained to flag uncertainties and avoid unsupported claims, and is 4x less likely to let code flaws pass unremarked — a direct shot at hallucination risk that has haunted enterprise AI adoption.

Anthropic also announced that Mythos-class models will roll out to customers in the coming weeks, following an exclusive preview to select users.

On the infrastructure side, Anthropic is not waiting. The company has secured five gigawatts of new compute capacity with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and five gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity with Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) and Broadcom Inc. (AVGO).

It is also spending $1.25 billion per month with SpaceX for GPU access across the Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 clusters — a staggering commitment that signals the scale at which Claude is being deployed.

Mega-IPO Race is On

Ives says more details from the S-1 are expected in the coming weeks, with Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX all angling to be first through the door in what has become the most hotly contested IPO sprint in years. Investors will be watching closely.