This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on October 26th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
The AI company Anthropic is applying for a stock market listing in the U.S. What happens now? SvD’s tech analyst Björn Jeffery answers three questions about the situation.
An Anthropic listing was expected, and until a couple of months ago it was a race between the company and its competitor OpenAI over which would go public first.
Anthropic now goes first, because it has the strongest momentum. After starting out as number two, its push for enterprise customers has paid off, and it is now growing very fast. When OpenAI reaches the market, its numbers will be compared directly with Anthropic’s. If that comparison is unflattering, it could in turn lead OpenAI to delay its listing further.
There are three primary reasons why it is happening right now.
The first is that a U.S. listing is a way to give investors and employees the chance to sell their shares freely. After an incredible rise in value in recent years, there are many newly minted dollar millionaires who want the option to sell. There are also many on the opposite side – those who haven’t been able to buy Anthropic shares until now. These groups can now meet.
The second and most important reason concerns Anthropic’s financing. As the company grows – and the need for data center capacity increases – very large amounts of capital will be required. By going public, it gains access to a different kind of financing that private companies don’t have. It has financial commitments of hundreds of billions of dollars that will have to be paid, and the stock market is one way to solve that.
The third and last is timing. The prospectus shows that revenue for the first half of 2026 grew by about 1,300 percent. You’d be hard pressed to find a stronger tailwind.
With revenue growth of over a thousand percent, it is clear that demand in the AI market is rising sharply. Less clear is whether it will keep up in the same way, and whether the costs Anthropic has already committed to will match revenue going forward. It has already promised to pay $855 billion for capacity, chips and the like – spread over many years, in some cases up to 20 years ahead. No human being can reasonably foresee how demand will develop over such a period.
It also isn’t enough for AI development to move fast – it has to match the timing of the costs Anthropic has tied itself to, to avoid causing major problems. As with the dotcom crash, there was an underlying interest that turned out to be right. The internet did become very big in the end! But even if the same holds for AI in the long run, short-term problems can arise if demand falls out of sync with costs.
Anthropic has many customer contracts too, and they are, as noted, growing quickly. But most customers haven’t committed in a corresponding way. The contracts are nowhere near as long. Customers can keep using AI services, but choose another provider instead. So even if the AI trend holds, it isn’t a given that Anthropic in particular wins in the long run.
Short customer contracts and long supplier contracts look like the single biggest risk for the company.
Once Anthropic’s stock trades openly, small savers will be able to buy it like any American stock. But even those who choose not to buy it may end up owning it anyway – whether they want to or not.
A listing of this size will find its way into several large and popular indexes, and therefore into many index funds. These funds make no judgment on whether each company’s valuation is reasonable, but simply follow what the index looks like. Should Anthropic get the valuation rumored earlier – over a trillion dollars – it could become a major player in many indexes. Then you, as a small saver, may end up with the stock in your pension or ordinary fund savings – regardless of what you think of the valuation or Anthropic’s prospects.
