Anthropic eyes Nasdaq IPO at $2 trillion or more

Anthropic's pitch to investors leans heavily on growth and accounting. Quarterly revenue jumped 14-fold from a year earlier to $11.5 billion, and the annualized run rate reached $65 billion at the end of July. Gross margins above 80 percent look strong, but those figures come before revenue-sharing payments to partners like Amazon and the cost of training models, and the profit claim excludes stock-based compensation—making the headline numbers less straightforward than they appear.

Meanwhile, the company has taken an unusual path to the public markets. Instead of releasing its prospectus last week as expected, it shared the documents with only a small group of investors first, suggesting a more controlled rollout ahead of a mega-IPO. CEO Dario Amodei also publicly called for slowing down AI development, a stance backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

The outcome hinges on whether investors accept Anthropic's adjusted metrics amid expectations cited by SemiAnalysis analyst Joey Brookhart of $120 billion in annualized revenue by year's end and nearly triple that by the close of 2027. For IPO investors, the test is whether the run rate can sustain those targets once partner payouts and training costs are counted. Altman's statement that OpenAI won't go public this year may also shape how the listing is received.