Anthropic eyes October IPO as Claude AI sees record subscriber growth amid Pentagon battle

Anthropic Executive Sees Cowork Agent as Bigger Than Claude Code

A top Anthropic PBC executive expects the company's general-purpose artificial intelligence agent, Cowork, to reach a wider market than Claude Code, the hit product that helped turn the startup into an AI juggernaut. Anthropic has seen stronger adoption for Cowork "in the first few weeks" than it did in a comparable period for Claude Code a year ago, Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith said in an interview on Wednesday. Smith said the average large company has somewhere between 2% and 5% of its staff working in engineering. Cowork, he said, is more likely to appeal to "the rest of us." Cowork was released as a "research preview" product earlier this year and quickly made a splash online. Unlike with Claude Code, a similar AI agent for programming, Cowork does not require users to run a terminal and type in a command line. It's also meant to tackle a broader range of tasks, potentially appealing to a bigger audience. Anthropic has emerged as an AI leader and a fierce competitor of OpenAI in large part due to Claude Code, which the company recently said generates more than $2 billion in annualized revenue. With products like Cowork, Anthropic aims to help streamline a wider range of work tasks and replicate the success it's had with software developers. At the same time, Anthropic is competing with the likes of OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to build more advanced AI systems to power agents and other software. In the wide-ranging interview, Smith said he expects the rate of releases to accelerate. "I think the pace of innovation is going to increase," he said. "It is a reasonably safe bet to assume that model releases will keep coming, and if anything, they will keep coming with more frequency." Moving faster comes with challenges, however. Smith said the recent accidental release of the source code behind Claude Code was the result of "process errors" related to the startup's fast product release cycle. The leak was "absolutely not breaches or hacks," he said, and the mistakes have been addressed. "They're part of the incredibly rapid release cycle that we've had around Claude Code," he added. The exposure hits at a delicate moment for the company. Anthropic is currently in a legal battle with the US government over the Pentagon's decision to declare it a supply-chain risk following a standoff over AI safety guardrails. The company has warned that the labeling could cost it billions in lost revenue. Still, Smith said some customers respect that Anthropic "demonstrates its principles" in its dealings with the US government. As Anthropic battles the Pentagon, it's also pushing ahead with plans to go public as soon as this year, Bloomberg News has reported. Smith declined to comment on the timeline for an initial public offering, but said Anthropic is "very comfortable that we're on the right path from gross margin targets and the previous profitability targets that we've stated." For now, the company has a sizable war chest after finalizing a $30 billion funding round in February that can be used to spend on the costly chips, data centers and talent needed to compete in the global AI race. "We're very comfortable with our funding situation after the recent round that we concluded," he said.

Claude AI maker Anthropic considers IPO as soon as October - The Economic Times

Anthropic PBC is considering going public as soon as in October, according to people familiar with the matter, as the artificial intelligence company races with rival OpenAI to hold an initial public offering. The maker of the popular Claude chatbot has had early discussions with Wall Street banks about taking leading roles on a potential listing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn't public. Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley are expected to be under consideration for key roles on Anthropic and OpenAI's listings, some of the people said. The Information reported earlier on the timing of Anthropic's IPO. A listing could raise more than $60 billion, according to the report. Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions have been made, the people said. Representatives for Anthropic, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan declined to comment. Spokespeople for OpenAI and Morgan Stanley didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Anthropic was valued at $380 billion in a $30 billion funding round co-led by MGX that closed in February. It has partnerships with Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. These established firms have taken stakes in the AI startup, and have given Anthropic specialized chips and other technology in deals worth tens of billions of dollars. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staffers including Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, Anthropic has aimed to be a more responsible AI steward than its competitors. Claude and its underlying technology have gained traction with enterprise customers in sectors like finance and health care, as well as with developers. Anthropic has pledged to spend $50 billion to build custom data centers in the US. Anthropic ran afoul of the Pentagon earlier this year, which had declared the company a threat to the US supply chain under an authority normally reserved for foreign adversaries. The company won a court order on Thursday blocking the ban on government use of the technology, after Anthropic argued the move could cost it billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Anthropic's Claude Draws in Record Number of Consumers | PYMNTS.com

That's according to a report Saturday (March 28) from TechCrunch, based on an examination of credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted for the publication by consumer transaction analysis company Indagari. The findings show Anthropic's Claude enjoying record numbers of paying subscribers, though the report noted there are some caveats. For one, the data doesn't include every consumer, meaning it can't measure Anthropic's total current or new user base. It also doesn't include Claude's all-important enterprise business or its free-tier users. Anthropic, the report added, has not disclosed its total consumer Claude users, and estimates have ranged from 18 million to 30 million. The company did say that paid subscriptions to Claude have more than doubled this year, TechCrunch said. What's noteworthy, the report argued, is that consumers began spending in record numbers between January and February. Indagari also found record levels of previous Claude users returning to the service in February. The report noted that the popularity of Claude coincided with Anthropic's Super Bowl ad, as well as with news coverage of the company's dispute with the Pentagon. That disagreement centered around the military's use of Claude for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, leading the company to take the government to court. In other Anthropic news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the company's recent promotion doubling usage limits during off-peak hours amid heavier demand. "AI usage limits are essentially spending caps on computing power. Every message a user sends, and every response a system generates, consumes a measurable amount of processing resources. "When a user reaches the ceiling, the platform either cuts off access to its best models or stops responding altogether until the clock resets." AI companies, the report said, are "now managing consumer demand by rationing, and temporary expansions have become a tool for softening that reality." Meanwhile, last week saw a report that Anthropic executives are considering taking the company public as early as the fourth quarter. According to a report from The Information, some bankers expect the startup to raise more than $60 billion in its initial public offering. Anthropic was valued at $380 billion in a Series G funding round announced last month, in which it raised $30 billion.

Anthropic Considers Fourth-Quarter IPO | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. Some bankers expect the artificial intelligence (AI) startup to raise more than $60 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), according to the report. The company's plans could change at any time, and it could decide not to go public at all, per the report. Anthropic did not immediately reply to PYMNTS' request for comment. The company was valued at $380 billion in a Series G funding round announced in February, in which it raised $30 billion. Five months earlier, in September 2025, Anthropic was valued at $183 billion in a Series F round in which it raised $13 billion. When announcing the Series G in February, the company attributed investors' interest in part to its strength in enterprise AI and coding. It added that it would use the new funding to support that strength with continued frontier research, product development and infrastructure expansions. It was reported March 4 that Anthropic's run-rate revenue had topped $19 billion, more than double the $9 billion it achieved about three months earlier. That report said the company's growth has been driven by the popularity of its coding tool Claude Code and other AI models and products. The company said Monday (March 23) that its Claude AI model can now use customers' computers to carry out tasks such as exporting a pitch deck as a PDF file and attaching it to an invitation. On Thursday (March 26), it was reported that a federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the U.S. government's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk and its ban on federal agencies use of the company's products. A final verdict in the case in which Anthropic sued the government to reverse the ban could be months away, according to the report. On March 10, it was reported that Anthropic argued in a court hearing that it could lose billions of dollars due to the government ban on its services. An attorney for the company told the court that the government's actions had caused more than 100 customers to express concerns about continuing to engage with Anthropic.