Anthropic S-1 targets $2 trillion valuation on SaaS-like metrics

The S-1 lands at a moment when Anthropic's competitive footprint is already reshaping how investors view the software sector. Software stocks plunged in January after the company released industry-specific plug-ins for Claude Cowork in areas like legal, finance, and sales, competing directly with traditional enterprise software companies. A similar reaction followed the introduction of Claude Design, when Figma, the design software stock, plunged as investors saw Anthropic as a direct competitor.

At the same time, the filing shows a cost structure that differs from traditional software peers. Anthropic spends relatively little of its revenue on sales and marketing, with less than 20% of revenue going to sales, marketing, and partnerships in the first half of 2026, while compute and infrastructure made up its biggest line item and is expected to remain that way. The company had 5,300 employees at the end of the third quarter, far fewer than software companies with comparable revenue; Salesforce, for example, has about 83,000 employees and brought in $41.5 billion in its last fiscal year, which is below Anthropic's run rate.

The valuation comparison is complicated by that contrast. No other major sector earns valuations as high as SaaS, where stocks often fetch price-to-sales ratios of 20 or higher, and many of these stocks aren't even profitable on a GAAP basis. Some software stocks with a P/S ratio near Anthropic's implied 30 include Datadog at 25.4 and Snowflake at 21.9, and competition from Anthropic has itself suppressed software valuations, with many SaaS stocks having traded at P/S ratios of 30 or higher during the pandemic. Anthropic is growing much faster than those SaaS companies, with sequential revenue up nearly 50%, and is already profitable on an adjusted basis. While the stock has risks that SaaS stocks don't, like massive cloud spending commitments, comparing it to the typical software stock makes it look quite attractive.