Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, has chosen Nasdaq for a stock market listing expected in October 2026.
The choice, reported by Business Insider and confirmed by CNBC, hands the exchange a second major listing this year after SpaceX picked the same venue.
The company wants to complete the offering before the November US midterm elections, with a roadshow that could start in mid-October.
Anthropic filed a confidential draft prospectus, known as an S-1, on 1 June, though the public version remains outstanding.
The exchange decision is the clearest sign of progress toward a float that would rank as the largest in history.
What it might be worth
The listing carries a valuation target of around $2 trillion, a figure best read as the top of the range rather than a settled price.
That would more than double the $965 billion mark set by its Series H funding round in May, and eclipse SpaceX as the largest public offering on record.
The raise could reach $100 billion, according to Reuters, though both the size and the valuation remain under discussion.
On Nasdaq Private Market, a venue for trading shares in unlisted companies, secondary deals valued Anthropic at $1.27 trillion in mid-September.
Money in, money out
Anthropic's annualised revenue run rate, a measure that projects current monthly sales across a full year, passed $65 billion by the end of July.
That compares with around $9 billion in late 2025.
Against that growth sits a net loss near $42 billion for 2025, the product of heavy spending on computing power.
The company says it reached "adjusted" profitability in the second quarter of 2026 and expects the same in the third, though the basis for the claim will stay unclear until the full prospectus lands.
Advisors
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are leading the deal, alongside Citigroup.
Nvidia, the chipmaker whose processors train most large AI models, has weighed a $10 billion investment in the offering.
UK angle
Several London-listed funds hold stakes through the private market.
Scottish Mortgage, the Baillie Gifford investment trust, held Anthropic at 2.8% of its portfolio as of 31 July, against 6.6% for Baillie Gifford US Growth and 5.9% for Schiehallion.
Zoom holds a position worth $3.13 billion, around 11% of the video conferencing firm's entire market value, according to AJ Bell's Dan Coatsworth.
What the punters expect
Betting markets treat both a 2026 debut and a large one as near certainties.
On Kalshi, a US prediction exchange, contracts give a 93% chance that Anthropic lists before OpenAI, a reversal from a dead heat a few months ago.
The same platform prices a listing before 1 December at 69¢, before 1 January at 81¢, and before 1 February at 86¢.
Polymarket puts the odds of a debut by the end of 2026 at 87%, and its "$600 billion or more" bracket for the closing market value sits at 96%.
Rival staying home
OpenAI has ruled out a 2026 listing, with chief executive Sam Altman telling Fortune that safety concerns make this a poor moment to go public.
That leaves Anthropic on course to become the first pure-play frontier AI lab on public markets.
Rumbling row
The float comes as chief executive Dario Amodei presses for a slowdown in AI development.
In a weekend essay he called for third-party evaluation of models, common safety standards among frontier firms, and coordination between democratic and authoritarian governments.
The pitch drew a response from President Trump, who used Truth Social to accuse Amodei of "pretending to be a perfect little angel" and argued that the only guardrail AI needs is a capable president.
