Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is reportedly considering going public as early as October 2026, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The potential IPO would mark a significant milestone in the AI industry’s maturation, positioning Anthropic to compete directly with OpenAI in the public markets.
The IPO consideration comes amid intensifying competition between Anthropic and OpenAI. Recent reports indicate that Anthropic has been throttling usage during peak hours, which OpenAI appears to be leveraging as an opportunity to attract new customers. This dynamic highlights the competitive pressures in the AI assistant market, where both companies are racing to capture enterprise and developer customers.
However, Anthropic has faced challenges with service reliability. Multiple outage incidents in March 2026 have affected Claude users, particularly those using the Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 models. Despite these disruptions, Anthropic’s API has reportedly remained functional, allowing third-party integrations to continue operating normally.
The potential IPO would represent a major validation for the AI startup sector, following OpenAI’s own controversial transition to a for-profit structure. Anthropic’s public offering could provide investors with an alternative to OpenAI in the AI infrastructure space, while also increasing transparency around the company’s financial performance and growth trajectory.
The timing of this announcement also coincides with Anthropic’s expanding enterprise partnerships, including collaborations with Palantir that have made Claude the only AI model used in certain classified military missions as of February 2026.