LAIKA

2026/06/02

Surpassing OpenAI to Become the World's Most Valuable AI Startup

June 2026, San Francisco.

The spotlight is forcibly drawn here.

AI unicorn Anthropic has officially submitted its IPO application confidentially to the U.S. SEC.

This move has ignited the largest-ever IPO race in AI history, with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic finally set to face off head-to-head on Wall Street.

The early move is a meticulously planned blitzkrieg.

While the ultimate showdown between OpenAI and Anthropic hinges on whose technology is stronger, the ability to go public first grants a massive first-mover advantage in today's capital markets.

The IPO window is wide open, and the market is ravenous. The public market is currently fervent about AI concepts. Last month, AI chip company Cerebras soared 68% on its debut; last year, digital design platform Figma skyrocketed an astonishing 250% on its first day of trading.

The S&P 500 has just notched one of its best two-month rallies in history, with AI-driven trades accelerating and propelling the stock market to record highs.

Besides Anthropic's filing, SpaceX is also gearing up for its listing. The entire market is searching for the "next Amazon," and the winner-takes-all effect in the AI sector is accelerating.

Anthropic's decision to "cut in line" during the window between SpaceX potentially draining liquidity and OpenAI's pending launch is glaringly obvious—it aims to secure that massive pool of capital before Wall Street's funds are diverted.

01 Relentless Focus on One Thing

Last week, Anthropic completed a new round of funding.

Anthropic's latest post-money valuation stands at $965 billion, following a $65 billion Series H funding round completed on May 28, 2026. Led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, this valuation surpasses OpenAI's contemporaneous valuation of approximately $852 billion, making Anthropic the world's highest-valued AI startup. Its valuation soared from $380 billion after its Series G round in February 2026, nearly tripling in just three months.

Doubts once lingered over whether Anthropic's obsession with "safety" would hinder profitability. Now, its financials provide a clear answer: safety is precisely its most lucrative weapon.

Rather than chasing consumer traffic, browsers, or image generation, Anthropic has relentlessly focused on one thing: AI-powered automatic code generation. This minimalist approach has yielded astonishing returns. Its annualized recurring revenue (ARR) skyrocketed from approximately $9 billion at the end of 2025 to around $44 billion by May 2026.

Its revenue growth rate is virtually unprecedented in software history. In January 2024, its annualized revenue was just $87 million. By May 2026, that figure had surged past $44 billion—a staggering 5,000-fold increase in just 28 months. Even more explosive: it's on the verge of profitability. According to The Wall Street Journal, revenue is expected to double from $4.8 billion in Q1 to $10.9 billion in Q2 2026, delivering an operating profit of approximately $559 million.

What's driving this explosive growth? The true engine is Claude Code, launched in May 2025—an AI programming assistant that functions less like a traditional code completion tool and more like an autonomous AI engineer. Within six months of launch, its annualized revenue hit $1 billion. By February 2026, it had rocketed to $2.5 billion, shattering software industry growth records.

Currently, approximately 4% of all publicly submitted code on GitHub has been generated or co-authored by Claude Code. Major enterprises like Netflix, Spotify, L'Oréal, and Salesforce contribute over half of its revenue.

What's even more formidable is that roughly 85% of Anthropic's revenue comes from enterprise clients, whereas OpenAI still derives most of its income from individual ChatGPT subscriptions.

What do enterprise clients signify? Higher average contract values, longer contract durations, and stronger user retention. Anthropic already boasts over 1,000 enterprise clients, each spending over $1 million annually. Among the Fortune 10, eight are now steady customers.

02 Beneath the Halo, Everything Has Just Begun

Anthropic's early filing signals that the AI industry has truly come of age—transitioning from laboratory utopias to real-world market validation. Superintelligence is now being scrutinized in prospectuses, subjected to the rigorous evaluation of global investors.

The real drama begins this autumn. This is a quintessential capital-intensive arms race. The AI landscape is shifting from "technological competition" to a holistic contest of "capital + ecosystem." Who will achieve Large scale profitability (scalable profitability) first? Who will construct the deepest moat? Who will withstand regulatory pressures?

Too many questions remain unanswered.

Why is Anthropic rushing to file? Because "profitability" matters more than "valuation." In public markets, investors no longer pay for mere technological visions—they demand profit and loss statements.

Anthropic dares to take the lead because it holds the cards: $6.5 billion in funding + $44 billion in ARR + imminent profitability. This is its confidence. It stands at the tipping point of transitioning from "burning cash" to "printing money"—perhaps the most tantalizing moment.

According to The New York Times, Anthropic stated in a declaration that this filing "provides us with the option to go public after the SEC completes its document review." The company did not disclose details regarding the timing or scale of the IPO, noting that the transaction will "depend on market conditions and other factors." With this Monday's submission, its public offering could occur as early as this autumn.

Founded in 2021 by CEO Dario Amodei and several researchers from his tenure at OpenAI, Anthropic has repeatedly articulated Amodei's vision of "artificial general intelligence" (A.G.I.)—a yet-unrealized form of AI with capabilities matching the human brain.

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