AI giant Anthropic has announced plans to become a publicly listed company in the US after confidentially filing for an initial public offering on the stock market.
The company behind the popular chatbot Claude said on Monday it had filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in order to make an initial public offering (IPO) this year.
“This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review. The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors,” Anthropic said in a short blogpost.
Once public, people will be able to buy and trade shares in the firm on the stock market, however the price and number of shares to be offered remain under wraps.
The announcement comes after Anthropic confirmed earlier this year it wouldn’t have any ads coming to Claude. This, it said, was a decision to remain an ad-free work tool rather than a media platform with advertising.
“Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won’t see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users did not ask for,” the company wrote in a blog post in February.
Anthropic said it also wants to avoid ads in a separate window to ensure Claude offers a “clear space to think and work.”
According to the company, including ads would “introduce an incentive to optimise for engagement,” when sometimes, “the most useful AI interaction might be a short one, or one that resolves the user’s request without prompting further conversation”.
“There are many good places for advertising, a conversation with Claude is not one of them,” it wrote in the blog.
It is, however, exploring design and marketing tools.
In April, it launched Claude Design a new product that lets users collaborate with Claude to create designs, prototypes, slides, one-pagers and more.
It said that product managers had been using it to create product wireframes before handing off to Claude Code for implementation, while marketers could create landing pages, social media assets, and campaign visuals, then loop in designers to polish.
OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT has taken the decision to run advertising on its platform and recently launched in Australia.
The two companies, it seems, have reached a fork in the road. OpenAI, it would seem, is opting for a more consumer-facing model. Anthropic, meanwhile, is shooting for the enterprise market. Who finishes on top remains to be seen.
That said, Anthropic didn’t guarantee it wouldn’t reverse the decision to be ad-free.
“Should we need to revisit this approach, we’ll be transparent about our reasons for doing so,” it said at the time.
B&T has requested a statement from Anthropic.
