Anthropic delays IPO marketing to mid-October, targeting a listing just before the November midterms

Anthropic has pushed back the timetable for what would be one of the largest initial public offerings ever attempted. Reuters reported the company is now expected to begin marketing the deal in mid-October at the earliest and to complete its listing in the days before the US midterm elections in November, having previously been expected to make its prospectus public within a week. That filing is now not anticipated until late September.

The numbers behind the deal explain why the delay is being watched so closely. Investor expectations point to a valuation of $2 trillion or more, double the $1 trillion the company initially targeted. Anthropic is forecasting revenue of about $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028, against the $47 billion revenue run rate it disclosed in May, and is working to finalise a $15 billion revolving credit facility as part of its preparations. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citi are among the banks on the offering.

The delay coincides with mounting safety pressure rather than obviously being caused by it. David Sacks, chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, called for Anthropic to be investigated and for the offering to be paused following warnings from a researcher about the technology's risks. Separately, Anthropic disclosed a fourth AI hacking incident and said it has engaged the independent research firm METR to investigate, as a researcher resigned over safety concerns. Neither Anthropic nor the reporting on the timing has tied the schedule change directly to those events, so the connection remains circumstantial.

For public-market investors the read-through is about appetite rather than about Anthropic alone. A listing at $2 trillion would be the clearest available price on private AI value, and completing it days before a US midterm election puts the deal into an unusually volatile window for both market conditions and AI policy sentiment. What to watch: whether the prospectus actually lands in late September, whether the valuation expectation holds as the marketing period opens, and whether the METR investigation or the calls for a regulatory review produce anything that changes the timetable again.