Anthropic is lining up meetings with investors ahead of a potential initial public offering later this year, a person with knowledge of the plans told CNBC.

Bankers leading the offering are scheduling meetings between prospective investors and executives of the artificial intelligence firm behind the popular Claude models, said the person, who declined to be identified speaking about the process.

The meetings suggest Anthropic’s IPO preparations are advancing, as bankers begin sounding out investor demand before a formal roadshow and eventual share sale. Anthropic confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, but it has not publicly disclosed when it plans to debut.

The giant AI startup could hit the public markets as soon as October, though the timing could change, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the investor meetings. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment.

An Anthropic listing would build on momentum from June’s massive SpaceX IPO and further open the public markets to companies at the center of the AI boom. It follows years in which the industry’s biggest names remained private while raising hundreds of billions of dollars from investors.

Anthropic appears poised to beat rival OpenAI to the public markets, which could be an advantage for the startup if AI enthusiasm later wanes. OpenAI also confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC in June, but it has not disclosed any additional details.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of executives and researchers who defected from OpenAI over concerns about the company’s direction. Anthropic has found early success selling to enterprises, in large part due to its popular coding assistant, Claude Code.

The company closed a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation in May, pushing it above OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation for the first time.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, the three biggest Wall Street banks by revenue, are involved in the IPO planning.

The AI spending boom has fueled a resurgence in profit for Wall Street firms as they seek to satisfy investors clamoring for ways to fund the buildout and invest in or hedge aspects of the theme.

— CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report.

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