Anthropic investors expect the company to go public on the Nasdaq in October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more, a figure that would make it the largest IPO in history1,3,5. The Claude maker's annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, up from $47 billion in May and roughly $9 billion at the end of 20252. Investors project the company will finish 2026 between $100 billion and $120 billion in annualized revenue.
Half a dozen of Anthropic's backers told the Financial Times that the company's revenue trajectory would enable it to more than double its current valuation in a planned autumn float. Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in late May, when it closed a $65 billion Series H. The company confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC in June8.
Nasdaq and the SpaceX benchmark
Anthropic has selected the Nasdaq for its listing, following SpaceX's recent debut on the same exchange9,10. The company expects to raise as much as SpaceX did in its record-setting IPO, which totaled just over $86 billion including the over-allotment option11. A $2 trillion valuation would surpass SpaceX's $1.77 trillion IPO valuation from June.
Anthropic's senior executives have not set an IPO valuation target, even in private conversations with investors; the $2 trillion figure comes from investor modeling built off the company's revenue trajectory. Bloomberg reported that the listing will likely fall between late September and early October, but several steps remain: finalizing a revolving credit facility, selecting additional lead banks beyond the three already announced, and holding an analyst day.
Infrastructure spending and rival positioning
Ahead of the listing, Anthropic has signed a series of large-scale compute deals. It struck a $50 billion data center agreement with Fluids Tech, a $45 billion agreement with SpaceX, a $45 billion deal to rent capacity from Scale in West Virginia, and a $35 billion deal with Lambda, an Nvidia-backed cloud provider.
Rival OpenAI has doubled its annualized revenue to $40 billion, up from $20 billion at the end of 2025, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said "right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public". OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told employees that the lab "will be a public company in 2027".
Governance and the slowdown tension
Anthropic's prospective public-market investors must reckon with its Long-Term Benefit Trust, a small group of external advisers that controls the majority of the company's board4. The trust holds no equity in Anthropic but has significant influence, and the company plans to preserve its role after the IPO. Anthropic has told some shareholders it will generate an operating profit for a second straight quarter in the current period, according to the Financial Times[1].
The IPO push comes as CEO Dario Amodei has publicly urged the AI industry to slow the pace of frontier model development[2]. CNBC characterized the juxtaposition as a "tightrope" for a five-year-old company pursuing a $2 trillion valuation while its founder calls for restraint.
Bloomberg reported that an AI-driven IPO wave is set to accompany the Anthropic listing, with companies including cloud computing firm Nscale, smart ring maker Oura Health, and power providers Greco and Cobalt Power rushing to get ahead of the offering13.