Anthropic said it has filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to hold an initial public offering, amid what could be an unprecedented year for flotations on Wall Street.

Aerospace firm SpaceX, which holds a virtual monopoly on space launches in the US, has also filed for what is expected to be a record-breaking IPO, while Anthropic competitor OpenAI is reportedly planning an offering later in 2026.

Anthropic was founded only in 2021, but has grown rapidly in recent years, in part due to its relatively narrow focus on tools for programmers and businesses.

Last autumn, the company’s Claude Opus 4.5 model began to gain significant popularity, especially with coders.

More recently, Anthropic has gained widespread attention after claiming its Claude Mythos model was significantly more capable than other tools at finding security flaws in computer systems, leading it to work with banks and governments to help secure their systems before the model’s release.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that surging revenue may see Anthropic record its first profitable quarter during the period ended in June, as its income for the quarter was on track to more than double over the previous quarter.

But the company reportedly does not necessarily expect to show a profit in future quarters, as it is also ramping up spending on compute infrastructure.

That includes a recent deal with SpaceX to use capacity at its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centres, for which it is reportedly paying $1.25 billion (£930m) a month.

Neither SpaceX nor OpenAI are profitable.

Anthropic’s most recent funding round valued it at $965bn, for the first time surpassing OpenAI, which was most recently valued at $852bn.

In spite of widespread enthusiasm around AI, industry analysts note that the technology has not yet progressed to the stage of being useful for day-to-day tasks, with Gartner estimating it could be two to five years before technologies such as foundational models or AI agents will become productive.