In the autumn of 2026, Anthropic — the AI safety company that has quietly become one of the most consequential private enterprises in the world — is taking its final steps toward the public markets, though on a calendar slightly longer than first imagined. The delay of a few weeks is less a stumble than a pause before a historic threshold: a potential $2 trillion valuation that would place this company among the largest public offerings ever attempted. What is being weighed here is not merely a stock price, but whether the public, through its markets, is ready to make a generational bet on art