Anthropic explores IPO after record subscriber growth

Claude developer Anthropic is in early talks with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley about an IPO that could value the company at over 60 billion dollars. The earliest possible timeline is the fourth quarter of 2026.

The backdrop is explosive growth. An analysis of credit card transactions from 28 million US consumers, conducted by Indagari for TechCrunch, shows record subscription numbers for Claude. Paying subscribers have more than doubled in 2026, with a particularly sharp increase between January and February.

Anthropic's annualized revenue surpassed 19 billion dollars in early March, up from 9 billion at the end of 2025. Enterprise customers account for roughly 80 percent of revenue, and the number of customers spending over 100,000 dollars annually on Claude has grown sevenfold in the past year.

A striking figure: Anthropic has captured over 73 percent of all spending among companies purchasing AI tools for the first time. This suggests Claude has become the default choice for businesses entering the AI space.

The subscriber surge coincided with Anthropic's Super Bowl ad and its high-profile dispute with the Pentagon over military use of Claude. The company's latest private valuation was 380 billion dollars following a 30 billion dollar Series G round in February 2026.

No official S-1 filing has been made, and the timeline remains preliminary. But the signals are clear: Anthropic is preparing to become a publicly traded company.