Goldman Sachs leads Anthropic's IPO alongside Morgan Stanley, ticker ANT

Anthropic PBC filed its Form S-1 with the SEC today, October 26, 2026, and the banker seating chart is already the hottest table in finance. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have the lead seats as the company moves toward a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT.

The Information put it bluntly in a headline: "Goldman Sachs to Lead Anthropic IPO." Bloomberg Law, citing the filing, says the IPO is being led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, along with 20 other banks. That is a very full room, and everyone in it is wearing a good suit.

Who sits where on the cover

Here is the glamorous part, and also the careful part. The question of whether Goldman holds the exclusive lead-left spot, the top-billed position on the prospectus cover, is not settled by the coverage I have. MarketWatch, Bloomberg Law and NDTV Profit describe Goldman and Morgan Stanley as joint lead banks or bookrunners. The Information's headline points to Goldman alone. The reporting does not say which name sits on the left.

Morgan Stanley is not exactly sulking in the corner. It has been named stabilization agent, which means it oversees the deal's early trading. Goldman and Morgan Stanley also held the lead roles on SpaceX's blockbuster offering earlier this year. Same two banks, bigger ticker.

The prospectus names Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays, Wells Fargo Securities, BofA Securities, Deutsche Bank Securities, RBC Capital Markets and UBS Investment Bank, among others. Anthropic's executive offices are listed at 548 Market Street, PMB 90375, San Francisco. A mailbox number for a company with this guest list. Gorgeous.

The numbers behind the ticker

The filing itself leaves the biggest boxes empty. The number of shares and the price range are blank in this initial S-1. So the headline figures come from outside it.

IFR reported that Anthropic is targeting up to $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation, with a roadshow starting November 9 and a mid-November debut. IFR also puts third-quarter revenue at $16.8 billion, up 45% from $11.6 billion in the second quarter. Investing.com's headline says $16.3 billion, so the revenue figure is not agreed across outlets. DA Davidson's Gil Luria estimates annual recurring revenue at $74 billion at the end of the third quarter. Those revenue figures come from IFR's reporting and Luria's estimate.

The spending side is just as dazzling. The filing says Anthropic will pay SpaceX around $3.1 billion per month to access compute powered by Nvidia GPUs once all promised capacity is delivered, and the company has agreed to spend up to $120.5 billion over a period extending into 2029. It also has agreements with Microsoft, Nscale, Lambda and other cloud providers for compute capacity powered by Nvidia GPUs.

On the money raised: both Anthropic and selling stockholders plan to sell shares, and Anthropic will not receive any proceeds from the shares the selling stockholders sell. What it does receive is earmarked for "general corporate purposes," including capital expenditures, working capital, operating expenses and hiring and retention. The company may also use it to acquire or invest in businesses, products, services or technologies. Golden Era's report on the filing has the full tour.

Who actually holds the steering wheel

Anthropic is a Delaware public benefit corporation whose stated purpose is "the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity." It also runs a multi-class share system: Class A, Class N, Class T, Class F and Class E.

Class A shares carry one vote each. Class N shares have no votes and are held primarily by strategic partners. Class T shares are held by the Long-Term Benefit Trust, which uses them to elect and remove a majority of the board, without economic rights.

Then comes the showstopper. A single Class F share, issued just before the offering closes to Founder LLC, carries 50.1% of the total voting power on matters put to stockholders generally. It has no economic rights. Founder LLC is owned by CEO Dario Amodei, President Daniela Amodei and five other co-founders: Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandish and Christopher Olah. That group owns about 1.7 billion Class A shares in total. The result is that Anthropic says it is a "controlled company" under Nasdaq's governance rules.

Bloomberg Law adds that the company warned in the filing that its technology carried existential risks. Public markets, meet your newest risk factor.

What to watch

Not everyone is applauding. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine wrote to Amodei asking Anthropic to pause the IPO until it "fully and transparently addresses" concerns over AI safety, governance and the pace of development. How the company answers is unknown.

The rest is a checklist:

• The amended S-1 with a share count and price range
• Whether the November 9 roadshow and mid-November debut hold
• The verified revenue, net loss and gross margin from the filing's own financial statements

Anthropic filed confidentially in June, and Bloomberg Law says it is moving a step closer to being the first company focused primarily on developing the most advanced AI models to go public. Everything is historic. Especially today.