According to Reuters, Anthropic could push its IPO to after the November US midterm elections, with the elections not expected to have a major impact on the offering. The company is now seeking shareholder approval for a new corporate structure that would award CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders a combined 50.1% of voting power, as reported by The Information. This new arrangement emulates a founder-control structure similar to Palantir's model, with the co-founders receiving a special class of shares giving them collective voting control in most corporate matters. The structure would apply as long as three of the seven co-founders retain a minimum number of shares in the company. Marketing is expected to begin in mid-October at the earliest, with the company preparing for what could be one of the biggest IPOs on record. The company is also planning to give employees a special class of stock that would serve as tie-breaker votes on some corporate issues, according to The Information.
A potentially bigger challenge for Anthropic and other leading AI providers is the rise of open-source and open-weight models, which can lower token costs and allow companies to build more of their own AI infrastructure rather than rely on providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI. The shift could put pressure on the economics of the AI industry as companies have more options to develop and run models outside the leading commercial providers, broadening the competitive threat beyond the race between Anthropic and OpenAI. Meta Platforms, which has been among Anthropic's largest customers, is looking to reduce its use of Anthropic's models as it develops more AI capabilities internally, according to people familiar with the matter. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite competitive pressures, Anthropic has demonstrated strong revenue growth with its annualized revenue run rate topping $65 billion by the end of July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. The company is also projecting a 2028 revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion, as reported by Reuters. OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate passed $40 billion in July, with the company releasing GPT-6 Astra on September 3, which has received strong response from enterprise users and developers. Astra accounted for about 13% of enterprise AI spending tracked by corporate expense platform Ramp, compared with about 8% for Anthropic's Claude Fable. OpenRouter said its users spent more on OpenAI models than on Anthropic models last week, the first time OpenAI has led on that measure in more than two and a half years.
The AI regulation debate has created a complex landscape with opposing camps emerging. President Trump called NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang onstage at a conference on September 14, dismissing AI safety concerns as "a hoax" and openly opposing regulatory proposals, signaling a light-touch federal regulatory environment. However, the irony lies in companies most loudly advocating for regulation being the ones going public. Anthropic is still on track for its October 2026 IPO at a reported ₹20,000 crore ($2 trillion) valuation, positioning its public listing transparency requirements as supporting safety commitments rather than undermining them. CEO Dario Amodei's safety warnings have drawn criticism from some who view them as "alarm propaganda" - a calculated tactic to manufacture urgency and inflate valuation before the IPO. In contrast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed on Saturday that the company would not go public in 2026, citing AI safety concerns, with the company now reportedly in talks for a fresh funding round at a ₹1,00,000 crore ($1.2 trillion) valuation before any public debut likely in 2027.
Multiple investment products are now promising exposure to Anthropic and OpenAI ahead of their IPOs, though with varying costs and structures. According to Bloomberg, the Fundrise Innovation Fund (VCX) says it has over 20% of its net assets in Anthropic, and another 10% to 20% in OpenAI. After beginning public trading in March, VCX shares surged as high as ₹575 before plunging to around ₹37 when restrictions on previously issued shares expired in August, now trading at ₹30 per share. A Cathie Wood-operated fund, the ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX), says it has 3.9% of its money in Anthropic and 5.3% in OpenAI. Some funds, like ARKVX, are not publicly traded, leaving investors at the mercy of operators if they want to sell. VCX charges an annual fee of 1.85% of assets, while ARKVX's expense ratio is 2.9%. After RVI went public in March, Robinhood created a second fund in August with 8 million common shares, giving retail investors access to early-stage startups, with the original fund charging an expense ratio of 3.13%.
