Anthropic targets $2 trillion IPO, but must prove it can match Amazon's earnings

Anthropic is preparing for what could be the most valuable initial public offering in history. Backers confirmed to the Financial Times this week that the AI startup expects to go public in October with a targeted valuation of $2 trillion or higher—more than double the $965 billion valuation from its Series H funding round in May and eclipsing SpaceX's record-breaking $1.77 trillion IPO in June. Anthropic filed for an IPO confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June and is also in talks to acquire the AI startup Decart AI for $6 billion. Rival frontier lab OpenAI followed suit with a confidential IPO filing but is not expected to go public until 2027.

The immediate valuation challenge is stark. At the Nasdaq 100 average of 34 times trailing earnings and 25 times forward earnings—the multiples that large-cap tech companies like Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft trade at—a $2 trillion Anthropic would need to post annual net profits in the neighborhood of $59 billion to $79 billion. For perspective, Nvidia earned $120.1 billion in net income last fiscal year, Alphabet made $132 billion, Apple earned $112 billion, and Microsoft posted $133.7 billion—all on substantially larger revenue bases. Anthropic's closest analogue is Amazon, which booked $77.7 billion in net income in its most recent fiscal year, though notably a portion of Amazon's recent profits stem from its own Anthropic investment.

Anthropicis not yet profitable on a net-income basis, creating the "awkward part" of the valuation story. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic's second-quarter 2026 revenue would more than double to $10.9 billion, with the company posting an operating profit for the first time. Operating profit, however, is a misnomer for net income. Operating profit shows whether the business covers direct costs like salaries, compute, and research—but does not account for interest on debt or taxes. For a company sustaining a bleeding-edge frontier lab, the distance between operating profit and bottom-line net income could be substantial. Avery Marquez, director of investment strategies at Renaissance Capital, noted that "reaching near operating profitability will at least be something that in my mind makes this very large valuation maybe not seem so crazy."

Anthropiccan point to impressive revenue growth and enterprise traction to support its valuation narrative. The company's run-rate revenue climbed from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $47 billion by mid-May. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, citing outside data from TickerTrends, estimated Anthropic's run rate had reached $74.1 billion by mid-May, surpassing OpenAI's $41.3 billion (neither Anthropic nor OpenAI has confirmed these figures). Benioff praised "unprecedented revenue growth" and called out Anthropic's "enterprise hat trick: the best model (Claude), the best coding agents (Claude Code), & the best productivity tool (Cowork)." Enterprise customers are stickier and more predictable than individual consumer subscriptions, giving Anthropic a structural advantage over OpenAI's consumer-focused ChatGPT base.

Compute access and infrastructure will be a critical scrutiny point for IPO investors. Evan Schlossberg of Neostellar Capital Corp., whose fund holds a position in OpenAI, said that after reviewing revenue definitions, he will examine "what is Anthropic's source over the next 18 months, 24 months, of how much compute they will be able to access at any given time. Do they own that? Are they leasing it? Is it short-term leases? Is it long-term leases?" A company that owns servers or has locked-in long-term leases enjoys predictable costs and can optimize performance; short-term leases risk spiking costs and supply scarcity. Anthropic has been locking in capacity: it has deals with Amazon, Google, Broadcom, and GPU access through SpaceX. The planned Decart AI acquisition would bring software for chip efficiency and an inference optimization team—a common pre-IPO playbook, according to Marquez, that allows the company to present pro-forma financials reflecting the combined business before it has actually operated together.

Anthropic's October IPO would set the valuation benchmark for OpenAI. Schlossberg called a $2 trillion Anthropic valuation "exciting" news as an OpenAI investor, reasoning that "strong, credible demand for investments in Anthropic and escalating premiums on that revenue" would suggest "similar market trends for OpenAI." He is not concerned about one lab dominating the other: "If everyone in the world wanted to switch over to OpenAI tomorrow, or Anthropic tomorrow, or Gemini tomorrow, I don't believe those companies even have the compute to satiate that." Marquez noted that if Anthropic goes first as planned, it turns up the heat for OpenAI—which will be priced against a live competitor. OpenAI will have to answer whether it continues pushing into enterprise (where Anthropic is strong) or leans into scaling consumer monetization through advertising or paid conversions. The critical hurdle for Anthropic remains establishing financial metrics that make sense for a frontier AI company: operating profit is not net income, and investors will demand clarity on what path leads from one to the other.