Anthropic $2 trillion IPO valuation analysis

โดย Tim Official: Anthropic

Wait, the largest stock market debut in history is being priced on revenue that won't exist for another three years. Anthropic is reportedly asking public investors for a $2 trillion valuation. That number relies entirely on an annual revenue forecast for 2028. Bankers are applying multiples to a figure that is more than two years past the deal date. This would eclipse the record set by SpaceX, which went public in June at $1.77 trillion. The company last raised money privately in May at a $965 billion valuation. Investors now expect that figure to roughly double by October. The mechanism here is unusual. Public companies are normally priced off the last 12 months of results, or at a stretch, next year’s estimate. Reuters reported that bankers and investors are instead using Anthropic’s forecast for 2028. That forecast sits between $190 billion and $200 billion in annual revenue. It is more than four times the run rate the company disclosed in May. Before you dismiss the math as pure fantasy, look at the actual growth trajectory, because the acceleration is real. At the end of 2025, Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate was around $9 billion. By May, it had climbed to $47 billion. At the end of July, it passed $65 billion. That represents a 7x increase inside a single year. Second quarter revenue came in above $11.5 billion, compared to roughly $787 million in the same quarter of 2025. The company also projected its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million. Investors expect the run rate to reach $100 billion to $120 billion before the year closes. For context, OpenAI’s run rate sat near $40 billion at the end of July, which is around 60% of Anthropic’s current pace. So the growth is happening. The question is whether anyone can reasonably price three more years of it without the curve bending. There are visible headwinds already in play. Anthropic’s top model costs more than two and a half times the price of OpenAI’s flagship offering. Meanwhile, Chinese open-weight models are delivering usable performance at a fraction of either price. Revenue growth also slowed in June when the Commerce Department temporarily restricted exports of the company’s best models. It is a stark reminder that a single government decision can reach directly into the forecast. Now look at the multiple required to make this work. Palantir trades at 53 times its expected 2026 revenue, which already makes it one of the most expensive stocks on the market. Cloudflare sits near 41.6 times expected revenue. These are the reference points bankers are using to justify the ask. One investor told the Financial Times that a company growing at 800% a year should command at least 30 times revenue. On their own math, that points to a $3 trillion valuation rather than two. There is one more critical detail worth holding onto. Anthropic filed confidentially with the SEC in June and has been in a quiet period since. Every figure in this analysis reached the public through people speaking anonymously. The company has declined to comment on any of it. So the largest listing ever attempted is being marketed to public investors through numbers none of them can independently check, against a forecast for a year that has not started yet. This is becoming the house style of the 2026 IPO market rather than a one-off exception. Cerebras priced its listing on ramping infrastructure demand. SpaceX built its debut around an addressable market model that reached years past its actual financials. Both asked buyers to fund a shape rather than a result. Anthropic is the biggest version of that trade anyone has attempted. The bull case is straightforward and it might be correct: A business compounding this fast, already turning an operating profit, and selling into enterprises that are rebuilding their workflows around it, may look cheap at $2 trillion in three years. The bear case is equally simple: Every dollar of that valuation above the current run rate is a forecast. Whoever buys the stock in October is the one holding that forecast if the curve bends. Do you believe in Anthropic?