San Francisco, California - AI giant Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced Monday that it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO), as Silicon Valley AI companies look to raise the enormous sums needed to fuel the sector's rapid expansion.

A confidential filing lets a company submit its IPO paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission for review without making its financials and business details public until much later in the process.

"This gives us the option to go public after the Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review," the company said in a statement.

"The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors."

The filing came just days after the company said it raised $65 billion in a new funding round that valued the Claude maker at $965 billion, putting it on the cusp of a trillion-dollar valuation.

The latest fundraising round confirmed Anthropic's place as one of the most significant players in AI, having built its reputation by focusing on delivering generative AI to enterprise clients.

Anthropic's near-trillion-dollar valuation puts it ahead of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in March and is also aiming to go public as early as this year, with a filing expected imminently.

The IPOs would likely follow Elon Musk's SpaceX to Wall Street.

SpaceX – which absorbed his AI company, xAI, in February – could see shares begin trading as early as June 12, targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion in what would be the largest IPO in history.

The IPO filing comes as Anthropic navigates a high-profile legal dispute with the Pentagon, having sued the Defense Department after the agency designated the company a supply chain risk.

Anthropic called the move unconstitutional retaliation for its refusal to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models.