It’s raining mega-IPOs. One week after Oura’s filing a confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its IPO, massively bigger Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, has done the same. As with Oura, neither share price nor number of shares has been disclosed in this preliminary filing. Anthropic release

The S-1 filing comes on top of their 28 May announcement of a $65 billion Series H funding led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. The valuation of $965 billion makes Anthropic the most valuable AI company on Planet Earth and perhaps the entire Solar System, surpassing OpenAI by about $113 billion. Anthropic’s valuation in February was $380 billion with their Series G raise, so the Series H valuation multiplied that by a stunning 2.5 times+ in three months. The new funds will be used for AI research, expanding its computing power for Claude, and scaling its products and partnerships.  CNBC, Mobihealthnews, Anthropic release

Anthropic’s over-the-top valuation was boosted by its projected annual revenue run of $50 billion, tipping into profitability this quarter, beating its own growth metrics regularly, and introducing new Claude products such as Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Mythos Preview with advanced cybersecurity available to a limited group of companies. Anthropic in January rolled out Claude for Healthcare for providers and consumers. Claude pulled in front in corporate sales, ahead of OpenAI, as of April, and last month inked a new partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb to implement Claude throughout the company.

But are we at Peak AI? Axios, never one to shy away from Cold Buckets of Water when it makes for a good lede, has been trumpeting for the past week that companies are suddenly shying away from their “discovery” of soaring AI costs. Suddenly, ballooning IT costs, uncertain productivity gains, and a strange combination of employee overuse and sudden skepticism are causes for concern. An AI consultant told Axios that employees blew through half a billion dollars in a single month because they didn’t put usage limits on Claude licenses. Then the CEO of an AI software company, CloudBees, admitted that companies are using workforce cuts to offset their soaring AI costs. This has to be one of the worst-kept secrets in corporate America. Even a casual peruser of LinkedIn would have known this a year ago.

Corporate adoption in Axios‘ view is running into four expensive headwinds such as:

• Using AI to automate disliked tasks rather than prioritizing revenue-generating tasks–which is understandable without guidance and pressure on time.
• Using AI for trivial tasks such as checking the weather (well, no one said they couldn’t)
• Leadership is clueless on what AI tools work and are throwing licenses at the employee wall to see what sticks.
• Reluctance to give AI models proprietary information, which makes the AI tool less effective. (Not feeding AI models proprietary information to prevent it from becoming public in LLM models is, one would believe, an understandable concern.)

Even OpenAI’s Sam Altman commented when Anthropic’s Series H was announced that corporate costs are the most valid concern to date.

Unless there is a massive enterprise pullback in AI spend, though, look to Anthropic floating that IPO no later than the fall, even if corporate AI spend pulls back. It’s to be expected. The Gartner Hype Curve is fully in gear and the momentum from Inflated Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment will continue, until it is processed and moves on to the Slope of Enlightenment.