The possible Anthropic IPO could arrive already at October 2026This is what emerges from the Financial Times, according to which the startup's investors foresee a listing with a valuation equal to or greater than 2.000 billion of dollars, a figure that could transform the operation into the largest IPO in history and surpass SpaceX's record. For the company's initial backers, founded just five years ago, it would mean potentially generating billions in profits, but it would also represent a test for markets increasingly wary of AI's record-breaking valuations.
Anthropic, revenue surge pushes valuation
The basis of expectations is above all the Anthropic revenue growthInvestors expect the company, which creates the models, to see annualized revenue Claude, could reach $100–120 billion by the end of 2026, representing more than tenfold growth compared to the start of the year. In May, the company had already announced that it had surpassed $47 billion in annualized revenue.
It is precisely this acceleration that supports the most ambitious valuations. An investor quoted by Financial Times he observed that, assuming a 800% annual growth, even a multiple of 30 times revenue could be considered prudent. With this logic, the company led by Dario Amodei it could reach a valuation close to $3.000 trillion.
The $2.000 trillion valuation for the IPO, therefore, does not stem from a value already decided by the company. Anthropic's top management they have not yet set a valuation target, not even in private discussions, and investors are building their own financial models based on growth prospects. Over the course of 2026, venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, and other large investors have also invested nearly $100 billion in the company, whose valuation surpassed that of OpenAI for the first time in May.
Claude is the engine of growth, but competition increases
The main driver of growth is Claude, the family of artificial intelligence models developed by Anthropic and increasingly used by businesses. The company, led by Dario Amodei, has gained ground this year against some of its main competitors, including OpenAI and Google, focusing primarily on the business market.
To evaluate a company with such unique characteristics, investors look for comparisons with other listed companies considered to have benefited from the AI boom. Among these are: Palantir e Nebius, which this year have reached multiples of around 55 times revenue. However, there is no publicly traded company perfectly comparable to Anthropic, making it even more difficult to determine a sustainable valuation.
And this is where the first questions emerge. competition of Chinese AI laboratories The price pressure is intensifying, as model costs become an increasingly important factor for customers. According to Vantage, at standard published rates, some comparable OpenAI models cost about $1,75 per million tokens for inputs, compared to $3 for Anthropic. The gap narrows when caching and very long contexts are considered, but pricing pressure remains.
The conductor itself can take various shapes, in bare or tinned copper, with or without insulation. In some cases, a preferential bend can also be applied to the joint so that it operates exactly as designed. Chinese open-weight alternatives They've made significant progress, offering increasingly competitive models at a fraction of the price. According to Ramp data, Anthropic has continued to gain traction among US enterprise customers, even as businesses become more budget-conscious and begin looking for less expensive AI tools.
Problems with the American government
In addition to the commercial challenge, there are also institutional challenges. Anthropic is involved in a dispute with the US government And earlier this year, the Department of Defense identified it as a supply chain risk. In June, the Department of Commerce also temporarily banned some of the company's key models, contributing to slower revenue growth that month.
The company subsequently returned to very strong growth, but the episode demonstrated how regulatory and geopolitical decisions can impact the AI business. Also in June, export controls led to the temporary recall of some models, raising concerns among some customers.
Anthropic has nevertheless taken an important step towards the Bag: in June he filed confidential documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (Sec). The procedure introduces a confidentiality period that limits the company's public disclosures about its finances in preparation for a potential listing.
SpaceX's Precedent: The Record to Beat
The most important reference for Anthropic's future IPO is SpaceXIn June, the aerospace and satellite company Elon Musk had priced the IPO at $135 per share, reaching a valuation of $1.770 trillion and raising $75 billion. The deal established the record for the largest IPO ever, more than double Saudi Aramco's previous figure from 2019.
After trading began, SpaceX's value briefly rose above $2.000 trillion, before downsize In the weeks that followed, the market began to question how much of the valuation was tied to Musk's influence and how much to the company's fundamentals.
This is precisely the lesson that Anthropic must keep in mind. The market can reward a story of extraordinary growth, but sooner or later it demands that the review is supported by the resultsFor Anthropic, therefore, the real challenge will not only be reaching $2.000 trillion, but convincing investors that that figure can be sustained over time.
OpenAI and other tech IPOs pending
Anthropic isn't the only major AI company eyeing the stock market. OpenAI filed confidential documents with the SEC a week after Anthropic and had evaluated a debut as early as the fall of 2026 with a valuation above 1.000 billion of dollars. According to the latest rumors, however, Sam Altman's company could postpone the listing until 2027, avoiding accepting a valuation below the threshold of one trillion. Among the elements of the decision would also include a bridging loan that Softbank should refund.
The potential listing of the two AI giants comes amid a market already crowded with large tech companies waiting for the right moment. Databricks, valued at around $134 billion, has been ready for an IPO for years but continues to postpone it. Its CEO has called 2026 "a terrible year to go public," partly due to the focus on SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Stripe, however, remains one of the most anticipated IPOs on the market: the payments company is valued between 106 and 159 billion dollars on secondary markets, but has not yet filed an official listing application.
In this scenario, the possible IPO of Anthropic takes on even greater weight: a valuation of 2.000 billion dollars would not only be a new record, but would become a decisive test to understand how much the market is really willing to accept. betting on the growth of artificial intelligence.
