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Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, has confidentially filed for an initial public offering with the SEC, days after closing a $65 billion Series H funding round at a $965 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Capital Group, GIC, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners.
The Qatar Investment Authority confirmed it participated in the round, marking its third consecutive Anthropic funding round after the Series F and Series G. Abu Dhabi's MGX also confirmed its participation. Anthropic said it has reached $47 billion in ARR, up from $30 billion in April and $9 billion at the end of 2025, according to CNBC.
The filing makes Anthropic the third major AI company to move toward a public listing in 2026, following Cerebras (which listed on the Nasdaq in May at a $70 billion valuation) and ahead of OpenAI, which is expected to file in the coming weeks. Elon Musk's xAI is set to go public later this month as part of SpaceX, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation.
The arc of Gulf involvement in Anthropic has been one of the most closely watched dynamics in AI funding. In July 2025, a leaked internal Slack message showed CEO Dario Amodei acknowledging that accepting Gulf capital would "likely enrich dictators," writing "this is a real downside and I'm not thrilled about it," while arguing the company could no longer afford to stand aside as peers built massive Gulf-backed data centres. Two months later, QIA anchored the Series F at $183 billion while MGX was notably absent. By February 2026, that had reversed: MGX co-led the $30 billion Series G at $380 billion alongside GIC and Coatue, with QIA returning as a participant. Both Gulf funds are now on the cap table ahead of the IPO.
As FWDstart has previously mapped, the Gulf's sovereign AI strategy has split along clear lines: Abu Dhabi through MGX has aligned most closely with OpenAI (co-leading its $122 billion round and partnering on Stargate UAE), Qatar through QIA has been Anthropic's primary Gulf backer since the Series F, and both funds have backed xAI's $20 billion Series E. The IPO filing now moves all three positions from private holdings toward public market liquidity.
Anthropic's revenue trajectory has been extraordinary, growing from $87 million in ARR in January 2024 to $1 billion by December 2024, $9 billion by end of 2025 and $47 billion by late May 2026, driven largely by enterprise demand and Claude Code, the agentic coding tool that reached $2.5 billion in run-rate revenue by February of this year.
The company has reiterated that it will not build data centres in the Gulf, maintaining that placing AI infrastructure in the region poses long-term security risks, even as it has accepted billions in sovereign capital from Abu Dhabi and Doha.
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