Key Points:
- Anthropic has selected Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to lead its upcoming public listing, with JPMorgan Chase also securing an underwriting role.
- The selection follows Anthropic’s confidential S-1 filing, setting up a potentially historic initial public offering targeting a valuation of over $1 trillion.
- The startup recently closed a massive $65 billion Series H funding round, lifting its private-market valuation to $965 billion.
- Early backers are preparing for historic windfalls, with Salesforce’s early $50 million investment now valued at a staggering $5 billion.
The gold rush to take the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startups public has officially arrived on Wall Street. On Wednesday, June 3, 2026, Bloomberg reported that AI pioneer Anthropic has appointed financial heavyweights Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to lead its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO). The strategic selection follows the company’s confidential submission of its draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, June 1, 2026. By assembling this elite underwriting syndicate, which also includes JPMorgan Chase & Co., the maker of the popular Claude AI platform is preparing for a blockbuster public debut that could value the company at more than $1 trillion.
The decision to select top-tier underwriters comes right after Anthropic completed a mind-boggling private capital expansion. At the end of May 2026, the startup successfully closed a massive $65 billion Series H financing round, which lifted its post-money valuation to an astonishing $965 billion. This immense private-market valuation officially crowned Anthropic as the most valuable private AI company in the world, eclipsing its chief rival OpenAI, which investors valued at $852 billion during a March funding round. Prominent venture capital firms, including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital, and Sequoia Capital, led the Series H round, alongside strategic contributions from tech giants Google and Amazon.
While critics frequently warn of speculative bubble risks across the AI sector, Anthropic’s underlying financial metrics indicate a highly robust, rapidly growing commercial business. The startup’s annualized revenue run rate, which stood at a modest $4 billion in July 2025, has increased 80-fold over the past two years, surpassing $4.7 billion in May 2026. The company has informed its institutional investors that its annualized revenue run rate is on track to break past the $50 billion mark by the end of June 2026. While this rapid growth curve represents a significant sum, the company originally backed its developer platform with a $100 million commitment, which accounts for roughly 1.5% of its estimated lifetime capital reserves. For the second quarter of 2026, Anthropic expects to report $10.9 billion in total revenue, more than doubling its Q1 performance and exceeding its entire 2025 annual revenue in a single quarter.
Even more impressively, this spectacular revenue ramp is translating directly into bottom-line profits, defying the historical trend of high-loss tech startups. Anthropic is on pace to report its first-ever profitable quarter, projecting a strong operating profit of $559 million for the second quarter. This milestone is particularly significant because training and running large-scale, frontier-level AI models require immense, ongoing capital outlays for advanced graphics processors and clean electricity. By proving that its enterprise-focused business model can generate real operating profits, Anthropic has given its underwriting bankers the concrete financial ammunition they need to market a trillion-dollar public listing.
This historic public market transition is also spotlighting the massive, life-changing financial returns destined for early venture backers. Cloud software giant Salesforce Inc. represents one of the most winning stories in recent venture history. Salesforce began investing in Anthropic in early 2023, committing a relatively modest total of $50 million to the young startup. Following the completion of the Series H round, the value of Salesforce’s strategic stake has reached an astronomical $5 billion—representing a mind-boggling 100x return on investment. The public disclosure of this multi-billion-dollar windfall immediately sent Salesforce’s own shares up by 10% in a single day, proving how deeply public stock prices are reacting to the AI gold rush.
The race to secure a leading role in the Anthropic IPO has triggered an intense, highly competitive battle among Wall Street’s elite investment banks. Morgan Stanley holds a slight competitive edge in the technological IPO space, having historically led or co-led several of the largest technology offerings of the past two decades, including Meta’s landmark 2012 debut and Uber’s $8.1 billion offering in 2019. The bank has spent years cultivating deep relationships within Silicon Valley’s premier venture capital ecosystems, making it a highly natural choice to guide a trillion-dollar digital pioneer like Anthropic through the complex mechanics of a public market listing.
However, Goldman Sachs remains a formidable challenger, aggressively competing to expand its share of the lucrative technology underwriting market. Goldman Sachs recently scored a major strategic victory by securing the coveted “lead left” top position on the prospectus for SpaceX’s upcoming, historic $75 billion IPO. If Goldman can successfully co-lead the listings of both SpaceX and Anthropic, it will cement its status as the premier financial gatekeeper of the modern digital economy. By taking active roles in these massive transactions, these Wall Street banks are competing for a share of a massive advisory fee pool, even as some issuers attempt to squeeze historical commission rates.
This competitive battle for tech IPO mandates is playing out as issuers attempt to rewrite the traditional rules of investment banking commissions. Typically, Wall Street banks charge a gross spread of 4% to 7% for mid-sized listings, which drops to around 1% to 2% for mega-offerings. However, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly attempting to negotiate its underwriting fees down to a record-low 0.75%, forcing banks to accept thin margins in exchange for high-volume transactions. While the requested 0.75% underwriting fee represents roughly 1.5% of the overall global investment banking commission pool this year, the absolute dollar value remains immense, which helps explain why investment banks are so eager to secure premium, higher-margin roles on other massive listings like Anthropic’s.
Ultimately, the decision to appoint Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to lead its public listing marks a monumental turning page for the global technology economy. By pairing its record-breaking $965 billion private valuation with a robust, highly profitable business model and the world’s most prestigious financial advisers, the startup is building a formidable, long-term moat. As the confidential S-1 review progresses and the planned autumn listing window approaches, the financial world will watch with intense interest. If the market successfully absorbs this massive, trillion-dollar transaction, it will officially confirm that the future of global wealth belongs to those who control the cognitive infrastructure of artificial intelligence.
