Anthropic Prepares for IPO That Could Surpass SpaceX
Investors in the AI company behind Claude estimate that an initial public offering on Wall Street could reach $2 trillion, setting a historic record.
Investors in the AI company behind Claude estimate that an initial public offering on Wall Street could reach $2 trillion, setting a historic record.
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company developing Claude, is gearing up for a stock market debut that could become the most valuable in history. According to the Financial Times, which spoke with six company investors, the initial public offering (IPO) planned for October 2026 could value Anthropic at no less than $2 trillion. This would more than double the company's valuation from May and surpass SpaceX, which debuted on Wall Street in June with an initial valuation of $1.77 trillion.
SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, raised $75 billion in June in the largest U.S. IPO ever executed. Anthropic has not yet officially set the valuation at which it intends to go to market and declined to comment on the Financial Times' estimates, but its shareholders are already counting on figures that underscore the scale of the global race for artificial intelligence.
The key driver behind such high valuations is the speed of revenue growth. In May, Anthropic announced that annualized revenue had surpassed $47 billion, a figure confirmed by Reuters. Investors believe that by the end of 2026, this number could rise to between $100 billion and $120 billion, more than ten times the figure at the start of the year.
One investor who spoke with the Financial Times believes that with 800% growth and a 30-times revenue multiple, Anthropic could theoretically reach a valuation of as much as $3 trillion. For comparison, companies considered major winners of the AI boom, such as Palantir and Nebius, have traded this year at around 55 times their revenue.
Anthropic has already begun the process of going public. On June 1, 2026, the company submitted confidential documentation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), without specifying the size or terms of the offering. This procedure allows for work with the regulator before the final prospectus is published and triggers the so-called quiet period, which restricts public statements about financial results.
In late May, the company raised $65 billion in a new funding round, valuing it at $965 billion and surpassing OpenAI. In total, venture capitalists, sovereign funds, and institutional investors have poured nearly $100 billion into Anthropic during 2026.
Despite impressive growth, there are risks. According to the analytics firm Artificial Analysis, Anthropic's leading model costs more than 2.5 times as much as OpenAI's main model, while Chinese open-weight alternatives are offered at significantly lower prices. As a result, some companies are beginning to slow their spending on artificial intelligence and opt for cheaper, albeit less powerful, solutions.
An additional challenge is the relationship with the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Defense. In June, Washington imposed restrictions on the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, prompting Anthropic to temporarily disable them. The restrictions were lifted in late June after the implementation of new safeguards. According to some investors, this episode contributed to a slowdown in revenue growth in June, followed by a recovery.
An IPO worth $2 trillion would be one of the most significant tests of how willing Wall Street remains to invest in the global race for artificial intelligence. Croatian readers can view this as an indicator of how crucial the AI sector has become to the global economy.
