Anthropic has pushed back the timeline for its highly anticipated initial public offering, with the public prospectus now not expected until late September and marketing for the offering unlikely to begin before mid-October, according to a Reuters report published by CNBC. The company had originally been expected to file its prospectus publicly as soon as the week of September 7.

The delay doesn't appear to reflect cold feet about the offering's size. If anything, the opposite: people familiar with the process say Anthropic and its bankers are now discussing a valuation as high as $2 trillion, more than double the $965 billion the AI company fetched in its most recent private funding round earlier this year. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are among the banks working on the deal, and Anthropic is separately finalizing a $15 billion revolving credit facility to give it a cash cushion heading into the listing, per Investing.com's write-up of the same reporting.

A Debut Timed for Maximum Attention

The company is now aiming to complete its listing in the days before the U.S. midterm elections in November — a window that would put the AI industry's next major public test squarely in front of investors already digesting a wave of AI-driven market moves. A $2 trillion valuation would place Anthropic among the most valuable companies on earth and, notably, above the roughly $1.77 trillion valuation SpaceX commanded after its own 2026 public offering.

A $2 TRILLION Valuation WOULD PUT ANTHROPIC ABOVE SPACEX'S OWN 2026 IPO DEBUT

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude family of AI models, has told investors it's targeting $200 billion in annual revenue by 2028 — an eye-popping figure that underscores how aggressively Wall Street is now pricing the AI buildout. The delay comes just as rival OpenAI made its own splashy announcement this weekend, and investors are increasingly treating AI infrastructure spending as the defining story of the market heading into year's end.

Neither Anthropic nor its lead banks have publicly commented on the specific valuation target, and the numbers could still shift as the roadshow approaches. What is public: the company confidentially filed its draft registration statement back on June 1, giving regulators months to review the paperwork before any public filing. Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment on the revised timeline.

For now, the mid-October marketing launch keeps Anthropic on pace to go public before the midterms — a deadline bankers reportedly consider important for capturing investor appetite before election-season volatility potentially complicates the market.