Anthropic has added Citigroup to its lead adviser group for an expected initial public offering, joining Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase on the deal, according to reporting on the listing.
Citigroup's addition expands the adviser roster nearly three months after the three other banks were named to lead the offering in early June. The four-bank configuration is standard for mega-cap tech IPOs, with each firm typically taking responsibility for distinct investor outreach and underwriting functions. No valuation or offering size has been disclosed.
Anthropic, the San Francisco AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives including Dario Amodei, has been planning a public listing for over a year. The company raised $5 billion in Series C funding at a $20 billion valuation in 2024, making it one of the largest private AI firms by market value. Its Claude large language model competes directly with OpenAI's GPT series across enterprise and consumer markets.
The timing of Citigroup's appointment may reflect changes in market conditions or Anthropic's capital readiness since June. Big Tech IPO timelines typically extend eight to twelve weeks from final adviser confirmation to pricing, though regulatory or macroeconomic shifts can compress or lengthen that window. Anthropic has not disclosed a target quarter or year for the listing.
The four-bank team carries combined equity capital markets infrastructure spanning North American and international markets. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have led the largest AI-sector exits in the past three years, including Nvidia's 2024 secondary offering and Broadcom's institutional sales rounds. JPMorgan has anchored AI infrastructure debt and equity for Model-X and other frontier labs since 2023.
No public statement from Anthropic, Citigroup or any of the four banks has appeared as of August 21. The appointment emerges as venture capital funding for AI safety and frontier model development remains at high levels, with over $11 billion deployed in the sector in 2025 alone, according to PitchBook data.
Citigroup joined the team alongside three other lead banks rather than in staggered additions weeks earlier, indicating Anthropic finalized its adviser roster in the past two weeks. The number that decides timing is whether Anthropic files preliminary IPO paperwork in the fourth quarter of 2026 or defers the listing into 2027.
