San Francisco-based Anthropic has asked Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to begin work on an initial public offering (IPO) that could take place as early as 2026, the Financial Times reported this week. The move positions the company, best known for its Claude chatbot, to reach the stock market ahead of rival OpenAI and would test investors’ willingness to fund large, loss-making artificial-intelligence labs. People familiar with the plans cautioned that discussions with investment banks remain ...