What to Know Ahead of Anthropic’s IPO (NASDAQ: ANT)

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, is the largest pure-play AI lab in the world. Its most recent private fundraising round back in May valued it at $965 billion

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Anthropic. Anthropic raises $65B in Series H funding at $965B post-money valuation. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources , putting it ahead of its rival OpenAI, most recently valued at $852 billion

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OpenAI. OpenAI raises $122 billion to accelerate the next phase of AI. Accessed Oct 26, 2026. View all sources . And that's Anthropic's valuation before its upcoming blockbuster initial public offering.

In late October, Anthropic published an investment prospectus ahead of an expected November IPO that could value the company at $1.5 trillion or more.

Below, we're breaking down what we know about Anthropic's IPO, the platforms that may allow retail investors to participate, Anthropic's current financial situation, and your options for indirectly investing in Anthropic before the IPO.

What’s the deal with Anthropic’s IPO?

On Oct. 26, Anthropic published its investment prospectus, announcing its intention to go public on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol "ANT

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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Anthropic, PBC . Accessed Oct 26, 2026. View all sources ."

The prospectus does not give an exact date or valuation for the IPO, but the latest reporting points to a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more, and a market debut before Thanksgiving

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Reuters. Anthropic's IPO filing shows explosive growth, risks and staggering costs. Accessed Oct 26, 2026. View all sources .

Which brokers might offer Anthropic shares?

We don't know for certain yet whether retail investors will be allowed to participate directly in the Anthropic IPO, or which brokers would sell IPO shares, but the prospectus hints that E*TRADE might be one of them. You can read our E*TRADE review here.

It says that the banks underwriting the IPO "may agree to allocate a number of shares of our Class A common stock to underwriters for sale to their online brokerage account holders." Only one of those underwriting banks — Morgan Stanley, the parent company of E*TRADE — has a brokerage arm reviewed by NerdWallet that offers IPO access.

If Anthropic directly includes retail investors in its IPO, the list of participating brokerage platforms may be longer than "just E*TRADE," but not by much. When SpaceX went public, only five brokers — E*TRADE, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Robinhood and SoFi — offered IPO shares directly.

More broadly, if Anthropic IPO shares are made available to retail investors, they’ll probably be through one or more of the brokers reviewed by NerdWallet that offer IPO access, which includes all of the brokers listed above.

What do Anthropic's financial results look like? Is it a good investment?

There have been a few leaks of financial information about Anthropic earlier this year, but the Oct. 26 prospectus is the first time Anthropic has directly published its complete financials for everyone to see. Below is the earnings table from that prospectus:

Anthropic is not yet profitable, and it lost a staggering $80 billion on paper in the first six months of this year, after losing nearly $42 billion last year. However, its operating loss (revenues minus expenditures on its core AI business) appears to be shrinking over the last 12 months. Its revenue is also growing explosively: In the first half of 2026, Anthropic brought in more than three times as much money as it made in all of 2025.

The prospectus notes that a large share of the net losses this year and last year — $72 billion this year and $34 billion last year — are only-on-paper accounting charges due to the increase in the market value of certain types of stakes owned by early investors in Anthropic, which have to be listed as liabilities under accounting rules even though they don't entail a real loss of money.

But then there's the "Other income (expense), net" row. The prospectus tries to wave away the $8.76 billion loss in this row in the first half of 2026 by saying that it's just the result of volatility in certain investments that Anthropic has made in other companies.

But in the opinion of our team, these losses are actually important, and shouldn't be dismissed like the convertible notes accounting charge described above. If Anthropic is making bad investments with its free cash and losing billions of dollars a year on those investments, that's something shareholders should consider when deciding whether or not to invest in Anthropic.

If you look at Anthropic's investment results and operating results together, then Anthropic has lost more money in the first six months of this year than it did in all of 2025, even when factoring out the accounting charges described above.

So is Anthropic a good investment? That's a complicated question that you probably need to ask your financial advisor, since so much of what you invest in depends on how your entirely portfolio is constructed. But we can say this: Anthropic is not yet profitable, and its financial results show large accounting-related and investment losses, some of which are relevant to future shareholders and some of which are not. But its revenue is growing fast and it's shrinking its operating losses over time.

Can you buy pre-IPO shares of Anthropic as an accredited investor?

Shares of certain private companies are available to accredited investors — people who have a net worth of at least $1 million, or an annual income of at least $200,000 for individuals or $300,000 for married couples, or certain financial licenses.

Several websites, such as Forge Global and Hiive, function as online exchanges in which accredited investors can trade these private shares. However, Anthropic is notoriously strict about this kind of thing. Its website states that it does not allow share sales without board approval, and that purported third-party sales of Anthropic shares may not be legitimate

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Anthropic. Unauthorized Anthropic stock sales and investment scams. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources .

Forge Global and Hiive both have pages about Anthropic, but don't get your hopes up: Both websites explicitly state that shares are not available on their platforms. (Shares of Anthropic’s rival, OpenAI, are available on both of these marketplaces. Check out our article on investing in OpenAI for more information.)

Funds with pre-IPO exposure to Anthropic

Despite the Anthropic board’s tight grip on pre-IPO shares, there are a few publicly traded funds that own stakes in Anthropic — or at least, say they do.

By screening SEC filings, we found several funds available to retail investors that claim to have at least 2.5% of their assets in Anthropic shares.

*DXYZ and LAZR are invested in special purpose vehicles that claim to have exposure to Anthropic shares. These claims feel suspicious to our team, especially in light of Anthropic’s warning about third-party investments (which explicitly says that investments in Anthropic through SPVs are not permitted). When reached, an Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on these funds and could not verify their legitimacy. Use caution when deciding whether to invest in these funds.

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Public companies that supply and own stakes in Anthropic

Another indirect way to get Anthropic exposure before its IPO is by investing in its partners. There are several large, publicly traded tech companies that both act as suppliers to Anthropic and own multibillion-dollar equity stakes in the company. We’ve listed a few of Anthropic’s biggest shareholder-vendors below:

• Alphabet (GOOG): Owns a stake in Anthropic worth more than $120 billion (more than 12% of Anthropic’s value) and is a major supplier of computer hardware and cloud computing services to the company

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  Bloomberg. Alphabet's Anthropic Stake Jumps to Around $124 Billion. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources .

• Amazon (AMZN): Has invested at least $33 billion in Anthropic over the last few years (that stake may now be worth significantly more due to increases in Anthropic’s valuation). Also a major hardware and cloud services supplier to Anthropic

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  CNBC. Amazon to invest up to another $25 billion in Anthropic as part of AI infrastructure deal. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources .

• Nvidia (NVDA): Invested $10 billion in Anthropic late last year (stake may be worth more now). Major hardware supplier to Anthropic and its partners

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  Microsoft. Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic announce strategic partnerships. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources .

• Microsoft (MSFT): Invested $5 billion in Anthropic late last year (stake may be worth more now). Major supplier of cloud services to Anthropic.

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD): Invested $5 billion in Anthropic in late July. Major hardware supplier to Anthropic

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  Advanced Micro Devices. AMD and Anthropic Announce Strategic Partnership to Deploy Up to 2 Gigawatts of AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs. Accessed Jul 31, 2026. View all sources .

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Be careful: The big AI IPOs haven’t gone great so far

Yup, it’s time for that part of the article where we harp on the risks of investing in big, flashy IPOs. But this time, we have a concrete, recent example.

SpaceX (SPCX) — which, in terms of valuation, largely consists of its subsidiary xAI, an Anthropic competitor — has had a rocky run since its June IPO, and has spent much of that time below its IPO price.