Anthropic faces a $2 trillion valuation question ahead of potential IPO

The path to a public debut

Anthropic is currently preparing for a potential initial public offering (IPO) that could be one of the most significant financial events of the year. The company is expected to go public in 2026, potentially moving ahead of its primary rival, OpenAI. To prepare for this, the firm may begin a roadshow starting on November 9 to meet with prospective investors.

Because of this timeline, the company needs to publish its prospectus soon so the market can review its financial health. Some analysts believe Anthropic is releasing its financial data in a deliberate drip-feed. This strategy allows the market to slowly absorb difficult numbers rather than facing a sudden shock when the full document is released.

The goal is to manage investor expectations regarding the company's high costs and heavy losses. By providing a gradual look at the books, Anthropic hopes to stabilize the narrative before the official offering. This process is critical for a company that has largely operated in the shadows as a private entity.

Explosive growth vs. heavy losses

The financial disclosures reveal a company experiencing growth at a scale rarely seen in modern business. Anthropic is on course to generate roughly $60 billion in annual revenue, a milestone that took established giants like Netflix and Cisco years to reach. In the first half of 2026, the company reported $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, marking a 45% jump from the second quarter.

However, these headline numbers are offset by staggering expenses. In the first half of 2026, Anthropic reported a loss of $80.7 billion. A significant portion of this, about $72 billion, was an accounting loss tied to debt expected to convert into equity later. Even after removing that specific effect, the company still faced an underlying loss of $8.7 billion.

The primary driver of these costs is the sheer amount of computing power required to train and run frontier AI models. Anthropic spent $9 billion on cloud services and chips in the first half of 2026, a sharp increase from the $2.3 billion spent during the same period a year earlier. This highlights the massive capital requirements of the current AI boom.

Infrastructure and circular finance

Anthropic has already signed contracts for AI infrastructure totaling $600 billion over the next ten years. They are also negotiating another $150 billion in agreements. These deals include major commitments with Google and Amazon, each valued at $110 billion, as well as a $31 billion agreement with Microsoft.

These obligations create a mandatory spending floor for Anthropic, regardless of whether its growth slows down. For the broader tech industry, these contracts serve as a source of reassurance for hardware and cloud providers. They provide a clear picture of where the massive investment in data centers and chips is actually going.

This situation creates a cycle of circular financing within the AI sector. Investors who back the infrastructure providers have a vested interest in ensuring that major customers like Anthropic remain well-funded. This flow of capital helps finance rapid expansion but also creates deep dependencies that could become risky if the flow of money eventually slows down.

The $2 trillion valuation hurdle

The central question for investors is whether Anthropic can justify a $2 trillion valuation while continuing to lose billions of dollars. To put this in perspective, the company is being compared to the SpaceX offering, which was valued at $1.77 trillion last summer. While Anthropic has already surpassed SpaceX in revenue and growth rate, it faces a different set of market pressures.

Investors are also looking at OpenAI, which is currently working on a private funding round at a reported $1.4 trillion valuation. This figure will likely serve as a benchmark for how the public market prices Anthropic. However, a private valuation does not always guarantee what public investors will be willing to pay at the time of an IPO.

Ultimately, the company may have to decide how much to 'leave on the table' during its debut. Investment bankers often suggest that it is better to let the stock price rise naturally after the offering rather than trying to extract every possible dollar upfront. Anthropic must convince the market that its future profits will eventually outweigh the extraordinary costs of building its current scale.