The race of AI mega-IPOs has a new entrant.
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI company behind the Claude platform, filed confidentially with the SEC on 2 June 2026 at a reported valuation of approximately US$950 billion to US$1 trillion.
That would make it, alongside the SpaceX IPO already in progress, one of the two largest stock market debuts in history.
For Australian investors, Anthropic will not be available on the ASX.
However, two ASX-listed companies are already directly embedded in the infrastructure that Anthropic depends on to power its AI models.
Both stand to benefit materially as Anthropic's public debut draws global attention and capital to the AI infrastructure theme.
Image source: Getty Images
What Anthropic actually does
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei.
The company competes directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, and its Claude platform holds approximately 5% of the chatbot market, according to eMarketer.
More importantly for the investment case, Anthropic's annualised revenue reportedly crossed US$44 billion as of May 2026. Furthermore, the company is on track to post its first-ever operating profit in Q2 2026.
As more and more capital flows into AI themes, the infrastructure layer beneath the AI stack tends to be a direct beneficiary.
NextDC Ltd (ASX: NXT)
NextDC is Australia's largest independent data centre operator.
The company is building a massive $7 billion AI data centre campus in Western Sydney, with OpenAI signed on as its foundational customer.
As Anthropic scales its operations and increases its compute consumption to compete with OpenAI's growing infrastructure, Australian data centre capacity becomes an increasingly critical resource.
NextDC has been growing at an extraordinary pace to meet that demand.
In the first half of FY 2026, NextDC raised its FY 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $2.7 billion and $3.0 billion. Contracted utilisation surged 60% to 667MW in the March quarter alone.
The Anthropic IPO adds a further dimension to that thesis: as AI company valuations are revalidated at trillion-dollar levels, the infrastructure enabling those companies becomes even more strategically important and even harder to replicate.
Macquarie Technology Group Ltd (ASX: MAQ)
Macquarie Technology plays a different but equally important role in the Australian AI infrastructure stack.
Where NextDC focuses on hyperscale data centre capacity for large cloud and AI customers, Macquarie Technology specialises in sovereign cloud and cybersecurity infrastructure for Australian government agencies and critical industries.
That is a market where Anthropic's Claude platform and similar AI systems are being deployed. The strict requirements within these deployments are that data must remain onshore and secure.
Macquarie Technology has now delivered 20 consecutive half years of operating income growth. This track record reflects the growing and non-discretionary nature of its customer base.
The company's $200 million National Reconstruction Fund investment, announced in March 2026, will fund the IC3 Super West data centre expansion designed specifically for AI workloads requiring the highest levels of security and sovereignty.
Anthropic's Claude platform is increasingly being adopted by Australian government agencies, financial institutions, and critical infrastructure operators.
Many of these organisations cannot use offshore AI infrastructure for regulatory or security reasons.
This creates a captive market for sovereign cloud providers operating on Australian soil.
Macquarie Technology is positioned to capture that demand. And no overseas hyperscaler can replicate what it offers in terms of data sovereignty and security clearance.
The broader AI IPO wave
The Anthropic IPO is not an isolated event.
SpaceX's roadshow began this week, targeting a US$2 trillion valuation. OpenAI is expected to file later in 2026 at a similarly extraordinary valuation.
Together, these listings represent the single largest concentration of AI industry capital ever brought to public markets simultaneously.
Investment banks, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, leading these listings, believe the liquidity impact is manageable. There is an estimated US$8 trillion sitting in US money market funds, providing the base demand for these deals.
As that capital flows into public AI companies, the attention and institutional interest in AI infrastructure plays, including those listed on the ASX, is likely to intensify rather than diminish.
The risks worth knowing
Both Nxt DC and Macquarie Technology carry meaningful capital expenditure commitments and are sensitive to interest rate movements given their asset-heavy models.
The Anthropic IPO has not yet been confirmed with a specific date or price. If it is delayed or prices are below expectations, the near-term sentiment benefit for AI infrastructure stocks could be muted.
Furthermore, both stocks have already run significantly in recent years, which limits the margin of safety at current prices.
Foolish Takeaway
Australian investors cannot buy Anthropic directly on the ASX.
But what they can buy is the infrastructure Anthropic depends on to operate.
NextDC and Macquarie Technology are two of the most credible and directly positioned ASX-listed beneficiaries of the AI mega-IPO wave now unfolding.
As trillion-dollar AI valuations are validated in public markets for the first time, the infrastructure enabling those companies becomes not just an investment theme but a critical asset class.
