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Anthropic Confidentially Files for IPO, as Sen. Sanders Calls for 50% Tax on Stock of AI Companies

HeadlineJun 02, 2026

Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, filed confidentially for an initial public offering on Monday, less than a week after raising $65 billion in funding that pushed its valuation to $965 billion.

Anthropic’s IPO plans come as several major stock market index providers have recently changed rules excluding unprofitable companies. The changes could allow Elon Musk’s private AI and rocket company SpaceX, which is about to go public, to be added to the indexes much sooner than it typically would, which means millions of Americans invested in retirement funds could end up owning a piece of SpaceX, whether they choose to or not.

This comes as Vermont’s independent Senator Bernie Sanders announced a new bill that would create a sovereign wealth fund by imposing a one-time, 50% tax on the stock of OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Senator Sanders wrote that the fund would “give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology. [And] guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer.”

Meanwhile, Florida became the first state to sue OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging they know ChatGPT is not safe, especially for children. This is Florida’s attorney general.

Attorney General James Uthmeier: “We’re here to announce that we recently filed a monumental civil lawsuit against Sam Altman and ChatGPT for endangering our kids and deceiving parents into believing that this application is safe for use. It’s clearly not. People are getting hurt. Parents are getting deceived. And they need to pay for it.”

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