Anthropic could bring the artificial intelligence boom to its biggest public-market test yet. Investors expect the Claude developer to pursue a valuation of at least $2 trillion in an October initial public offering, a level that would make it the largest stock-market debut in history.
Six Anthropic backers told the Financial Times that the company’s rapid revenue growth could support a valuation more than twice its most recent level. Anthropic reached a $965 billion valuation in May after new investment, according to the report.
The projections come from investors rather than Anthropic itself. Senior executives have not established an IPO valuation target, even in private conversations, the FT reported. Investors have instead produced their own financial models based largely on the company’s recent growth.
Backers expect Anthropic’s annualized revenue to reach between $100 billion and $120 billion by the end of 2026. Annualized revenue estimates what full-year sales would look like if recent performance continued.
“If Anthropic is growing 800 per cent a year, you’d think at the incredibly low end they would trade at 30 times [revenue],” one investor told the FT. That calculation would value the company at $3 trillion.
The company lacks a directly comparable publicly traded U.S. rival. Investors have instead looked to companies benefiting from AI spending, including Palantir and cloud provider Nebius, which have traded at roughly 55 times revenue this year.
Anthropic has gained ground against OpenAI and Google by selling its models to business customers. The company said in May that annualized revenue had exceeded $47 billion. Venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors have poured nearly $100 billion into Anthropic during 2026, according to the report.
The path to a record IPO still carries considerable risk. Anthropic faces competition from lower-cost Chinese models, growing regulatory pressure and an ongoing dispute with the U.S. government. A temporary Commerce Department ban on its leading models contributed to slower revenue growth in June, although investors said business later rebounded.
Price could become another obstacle. Anthropic’s leading model costs more than two and a half times as much to use as OpenAI’s flagship product, the FT reported. Some companies are already limiting AI spending or moving to less powerful, cheaper models.
A $2 trillion debut would therefore ask public investors to place an extraordinary value on continued growth. It would also reveal how much patience markets have for AI companies facing rising costs, policy disputes and increasingly price-conscious customers.
