Revenue expectations are central to the case. Anthropic ended May with annualized revenue above $47 billion, while investors project that figure could reach between $100 billion and $120 billion by December. Backers see that pace of expansion as sufficient to support a significantly higher revenue multiple.
One investor told the Financial Times that annual growth of 800% warrants a valuation of at least 30 times revenue, a calculation that could put Anthropic above $3 trillion. Palantir and Nebius, two publicly traded companies associated with AI demand, have traded at roughly 55 times sales, providing investors with another reference point as they assess Anthropic’s potential valuation.
Cramer similarly argued that a high multiple can be supported if Anthropic delivers the revenue investors anticipate. The debate, however, extends beyond how quickly sales are rising to whether that trajectory can persist after the company reaches public markets.
Patrick Corrigan, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, raised that concern around the relationship between investor expectations and the underlying economics of AI. “Whenever there is speculation, there's also usually substance and fundamentals. The question here is whether the price investors are going to end up paying is going to match up to the substance and fundamentals of what AI is really going to do in the real economy and as a business.”
Pricing represents another potential source of pressure. Anthropic’s flagship Claude model costs roughly 2.5 times more to use than OpenAI’s flagship offering, while competing model providers continue to lower prices. Ramp analysts have also found that businesses are “hitting their limit on AI spend,” with some customers moving toward less expensive models.
Anthropic’s supporters argue that its performance on business-focused tasks and its enterprise sales strategy provide an advantage against OpenAI and Google. The company increased its share among U.S. business customers last month, according to Ramp, while investors say growth has recovered following a slowdown in June.
Anthropic has also faced other complications. The company remains in litigation with the U.S. Department of Defense after being designated a supply-chain risk. Commerce Department export controls in June forced Anthropic to temporarily withdraw its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, an episode that unsettled some enterprise customers and contributed to slower revenue growth that month, according to investors familiar with the figures.
The potential listing is also drawing attention beyond traditional equity markets. Tokens designed to track Anthropic shares are already trading through PreStocks, Binance Wallet and decentralized venues. Solana accounted for 78% of pre-IPO token volume across the two largest AI companies, while several digital-asset companies, including Kraken, Ledger and Grayscale, have paused their own offerings this year.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are leading Anthropic’s offering and will play a central role in determining its eventual pricing. OpenAI is preparing for a possible listing of its own and bought back $7 billion of employee shares last week.
For Anthropic, the central question is whether its revenue expansion can support the valuation investors are now discussing. A $2 trillion offering would more than double the company’s latest private valuation within months, while a result above that threshold would establish a new benchmark for investors assigning prices to private AI companies approaching the public markets.
This analysis is based on reporting from Yahoo Finance.
Image courtesy of BigGo Finance.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
