Anthropic locked Nasdaq while OpenAI took 2026 off the table

Anthropic has selected the Nasdaq for its potential IPO and has been targeting an October listing, Katie Roof at Business Insider reports, citing a person familiar with the plans. The exclusive ran Sep. 13, 2026.

An IPO is the first sale of company shares to the public. Nasdaq earlier secured SpaceX, valued at $1.75 trillion. Some estimates put Anthropic at $2 trillion, though that figure has not yet been finalized.

Anthropic’s IPO filing has not yet been made public. The company must release financials at least 15 days before the investor road show begins.

A road show is the investor-marketing tour before pricing. A Nasdaq listing is also a prerequisite for Nasdaq 100 inclusion, the big-stock index that passive funds buy automatically.

Ana-Maria Stanciuc at The Next Web relays the BI report and prints additional circulating details: Anthropic filed confidentially at a $965 billion valuation; Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are to lead; a $15 billion credit facility sits in place; the timetable lands days before the U.S. midterms; and the company is preparing to pitch a $30 trillion addressable market. A raise of $100 billion would make it the largest flotation, the public listing, ever attempted, TNW prints.

Those bank, facility, addressable-market, and raise figures are TNW-printed briefings, not a public S-1. The venue and October target rest on BI’s anonymous source.

October is still on the clock. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spent the weekend ruling out a 2026 IPO as an ill-advised moment given safety pressure. Anthropic is still aiming at October, the same week a former Anthropic employee’s viral post put human extinction risk above 10% back in the headlines.

Capital markets want a listing date. Anthropic’s answer, for now, is Nasdaq and October, with the first checkable financials due within weeks if that timetable holds.

Opposite clocks. Same scare week.