Anthropic IPO still on despite AI safety fracas

Anthropic is still likely to go public this year, despite the recent tempest over AI safety and AI leaders’ calls to constrain its advances, Axios reports citing multiple unnamed sources.

Big time: Anthropic is aiming to raise up to USD 100 bn with a company valuation of up to USD 2 tn, making it the largest IPO in history.

MENA+ lens: This could be an attractive investment for numerous Gulf sovereign wealth funds. Qatar’s QIA and the UAE’s MGX have both invested in Anthropic in the past, Qatar in 2025 and MGX in this year’s USD 30 bn funding round.

Nvidia is in talks to anchor the IPO with a USD 10 bn investment, per Reuters. Anthropic reportedly expects to complete the IPO before November’s midterm elections in the US. Some investors question whether the maker of Claude can sustain its growth as OpenAI regains ground and cheap (Chinese) rivals undercut its business proposition, the Financial Times reported last weekend.

OpenAI, in which MGX also holds equity, is not planning to IPO this year, Reuters said, but is likely to do so in 2027.