American company Anthropic, which develops the Claude models, is preparing to go public on a scale the market has never seen before. The New York Times reported last Friday that the banks leading the offering are giving investors the opportunity to acquire more than $100 billion worth of shares, which would value the company at up to $2 trillion. The Financial Times reported as early as mid-August that investors themselves expect an October listing at a valuation of more than $2 trillion. If successful, it would be the largest initial public offering in history.
The company filed to go public on June 1 and has since been preparing everything necessary for an October listing, while the closely watched figures have doubled. According to sources familiar with the discussions, Anthropic's offering is expected to match or even surpass the record set by SpaceX.
Revenue is growing
Behind all of this is the pace at which the company's revenue is growing. Preliminary results for the second quarter show revenue of more than $11.5 billion, compared with less than $800 million in the same period a year earlier. Compared with the first quarter of this year, when Anthropic reported $4.73 billion, that is more than double. At the end of July, the company surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $65 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The other side of the coin is the cost of building cutting-edge models. Anthropic lost nearly $42 billion in 2025, roughly five times more than the year before. In the second quarter, however, it posted a positive adjusted operating result for the first time, suggesting to investors that the company's economics are improving as revenue grows.
SpaceX's record
The bar Anthropic wants to clear was set by Elon Musk in June. SpaceX sold 555 million shares at $135 each, raising $75 billion, and after an option for another 83 million shares was exercised, the final amount climbed to just under $86 billion. This valued the company at roughly $1.77 trillion.
Ten weeks of trading show how the market handled it. The shares surged as high as $225, 67 percent above the offering price, before falling to just under $105. The price is now hovering around the original $135. Anyone who bought at the offering price has made virtually nothing in two months, even though the company's revenue grew 92 percent year over year in the meantime. The price of growth had been paid in advance.
Investor estimates
About half a dozen people who invested in Anthropic told the Financial Times that they expect an annual revenue run rate of between $100 billion and $120 billion by the end of the year. Compared with the $47 billion reported in May, that would represent more than a tenfold increase in a single year. One of them argued that with annual growth of around 800 percent, the company should trade at least at 30 times revenue, which would put it close to $3 trillion.
Anthropic's management itself has not confirmed any figure. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao avoided questions about valuation at meetings with investors. For now, $2 trillion is the estimate of people who own the shares, not a target set by the company. In May, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a valuation of $965 billion, so this would amount to a doubling within a few months.
The offering is being prepared by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, and before filing publicly, the company wants to secure a revolving credit facility exceeding its target of roughly $10 billion. A share structure with enhanced voting rights for Dario Amodei and the co-founders is also under consideration so that they can retain influence after the company goes public. Amodei himself owns around two percent of the company.
