Investors in Anthropic expect the artificial intelligence company to go public in October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history — surpassing SpaceX, which listed in June at $1.77 trillion. The company filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June and is in a quiet period. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are leading the offering, targeted at Nasdaq.

One caveat belongs in the first breath: this number is not the company’s. Six Anthropic backers told the Financial Times that revenue growth could support a valuation more than twice the company’s most recent level, and the projections come from investors rather than from Anthropic. Senior executives have not set an IPO valuation target even in private conversations. Investors modeled it themselves.

The arithmetic behind those models rests on one number. Anthropic reported $47 billion in annualized revenue in May. Backers expect $100 billion to $120 billion by year-end — more than tenfold growth inside a single year. The company last raised at a $965 billion post-money valuation, after institutional investors put nearly $100 billion into it during 2026, lifting it above OpenAI for the first time in May.

Set beside SpaceX, the comparison is less lopsided than the headline number suggests. SpaceX priced at $1.77 trillion on 2025 revenue of $18.67 billion and a 2025 net loss of $4.94 billion — a bet largely on Elon Musk, given that the company was burning cash and was far smaller by revenue than any other trillion-dollar company. That works out near 95 times sales. Anthropic at $2 trillion on $120 billion of revenue would be about 17 times sales. On that measure the AI company would be the cheaper of the two record-setters.

Whether the revenue figure means what it appears to mean is the live question. The research firm IDC estimates Anthropic’s annualized revenue at $40 billion to $50 billion, with consumer subscriptions contributing under $2 billion. Part of the gap is accounting: Anthropic books some revenue on a gross basis, counting the full enterprise spend routed through reseller arrangements on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure rather than the portion it keeps. A public S-1 will force a standardized presentation for the first time. At 17 times revenue the multiple looks reasonable; at IDC’s number it is closer to 45 times.

Margins are the other unresolved variable. Anthropic’s gross margin — revenue less compute costs — sits at roughly 40%, and the company has told investors it intends to reach 77% by 2028. Compute is the cost of goods sold in this business, and closing 37 points of margin over two years is the assumption doing the heaviest lifting in any bull case.

The bulls are not shy about it. One investor argued that a company growing at 800% a year would command at least 30 times revenue at the low end, implying $3 trillion, and noted that AI-adjacent names such as Palantir and Nebius have traded near 55 times sales this year. Another told the Financial Times that $2 trillion was a lowball figure. Jim Cramer defended the number on CNBC, arguing that a high multiple is sustainable when it is backed by real revenue growth rather than sentiment.

The risks are specific rather than atmospheric. Anthropic’s top model is priced more than 2.5 times higher than OpenAI’s flagship, while Chinese open-weight alternatives can be run for a fraction of that, and some companies are already capping AI spending or shifting to cheaper, less capable models. Revenue growth slowed measurably in June during an 18-day period when the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security barred foreign nationals from accessing the company’s two most capable models, though investors said business rebounded afterward. The company is also in a dispute with the administration and the Defense Department, which labeled it a supply-chain risk.

Structure will matter as much as valuation. SpaceX set the template in June by selling about 4.2% of the company at a fixed price of $135, using a small float to establish a price for the other 95.8%, alongside staged insider lock-ups and limited public voting power. The offering was heavily oversubscribed, with retail investors allotted an unusually large share. A thin float can hold a headline valuation aloft on modest trading volume, which cuts both ways once lock-ups expire.

For readers weighing what this means beyond the AI trade, the useful frame is that October now carries the largest listing ever attempted, priced off projections that will not be independently verifiable until an S-1 becomes public. A $2 trillion debut asks public investors to place an extraordinary value on continued growth — and to accept, for now, a revenue figure that the company’s own filing has not yet had to defend.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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