The IPO door for AI companies has been welded shut since late 2021, but Anthropic might finally have the crowbar.
The Summary
- Madrona's Matt McIlwain says a successful Anthropic IPO could trigger a wave of AI public offerings in 2027
- OpenAI, Anthropic, and Databricks currently dominate private AI fundraising, setting the template for what public markets might eventually price
- The timing matters: AI companies have been raising massive private rounds at aggressive valuations, but public market validation has been missing since the generative AI boom started
The Signal
Anthropic going public would be the first major foundation model company to face real price discovery. Every AI startup's valuation right now is a fiction agreed upon by late-stage VCs who need the story to work. Madrona's IA40 list tracks the private companies building the next wave of AI infrastructure, but "private" is doing heavy lifting. These companies have raised at stratospheric multiples with limited revenue disclosure and even shakier paths to profitability.
The IPO window for tech has been frozen since late 2021. The few AI-adjacent companies that have gone public since then, like Arm and Instacart, did so on the strength of pre-AI business models. No pure-play generative AI company has yet submitted to the scrutiny of quarterly earnings calls and public investor expectations.
"A successful Anthropic IPO could open the door for a new wave of public offerings in 2027."
Here's why Anthropic matters more than OpenAI for this question: OpenAI's corporate structure is a governance Frankenstein, part nonprofit, part capped-profit, fully confusing to securities lawyers. Anthropic is a straightforward Delaware C-corp backed by Amazon and Google. It has enterprise customers, a safety-focused brand differentiation, and Claude performing well enough in benchmarks to justify its existence beyond "we're not OpenAI."
If Anthropic prices successfully and holds, it sets three crucial precedents:
- Public markets will pay X revenue multiple for foundation model companies
- Compute costs and scaling laws are acceptable risks, not deal-killers
- The agent economy thesis has enough believers with actual capital allocation authority
Matt McIlwain's comment about Databricks is equally telling. Databricks is data infrastructure, not a foundation model company, but it's become the backend for enterprises building AI applications. If both Anthropic and Databricks go public in close succession, you get two clean data points: one for the model layer, one for the infrastructure layer. That's enough for bankers to build S-1 narratives for everyone else.
The flood McIlwain anticipates in 2027 would likely include companies like Cohere, Mistral, and a dozen agent-focused startups that have raised at $1B+ valuations. Right now, they're trapped. Too big to get acquired, too uncertain to go public, stuck raising bridge rounds from existing investors at flat or down valuations. An Anthropic IPO gives them an exit path.
The Implication
If you're building in AI, watch Anthropic's S-1 filing like it's scripture. The revenue disclosure, gross margin details, and compute cost breakdown will become the template every other AI company gets measured against. If Anthropic shows a path to profitability, even a distant one, it validates the entire sector. If it doesn't, expect a brutal repricing across late-stage private AI companies.
For employees at these companies holding options, an Anthropic IPO is the difference between Monopoly money and real liquidity. The secondary market for AI company shares has been thin and chaotic. A public comparable changes everything. For everyone else, this is the moment we find out if AI companies are businesses or just very expensive science projects with good marketing.