Anthropic targets $1T IPO with $47B revenue, outpacing SpaceX

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude model family, confidentially filed for an IPO on June 1 with $47 billion in annualized revenue — more than double SpaceX's $20 billion — positioning it for a potential trillion-dollar market debut.

"Anthropic's revenue trajectory from $1 billion to nearly $50 billion in 18 months is unmatched in enterprise software history," said a person familiar with the company's finances, speaking on condition of anonymity because the filing remains confidential.

The company closed a $65 billion Series H funding round in late May led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, locking in a post-money valuation of $965 billion. That briefly surpassed OpenAI's private valuation and represents a 2.5x increase from Anthropic's $380 billion Series G valuation in February. At 21 times its annualized revenue, the valuation reflects the explosive growth of enterprise AI adoption, with about 80 percent of revenue coming from business accounts.

Anthropic is racing to list before or alongside OpenAI, which filed its own confidential S-1 on June 8 but is reportedly considering delaying its debut to 2027 after SpaceX's volatile IPO. SpaceX went public on June 12, raised more than $85 billion, surged 20 percent on day one, then fell to about $153 from a post-IPO high above $225. Anthropic's IPO timing will test whether investor appetite for mega-cap tech listings can withstand the market volatility that followed SpaceX's rocky debut.

Anthropic's valuation has climbed from $61.5 billion in early 2025 to $965 billion by May 2026, a trajectory that reflects the market's bet that Claude can sustain its competitive edge against OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company plans to float only 5 percent to 10 percent of its total shares during the IPO, a restricted float that could trigger extreme price volatility in the opening weeks, followed by potential downside pressure when institutional lockup periods expire.

Anthropic remains unprofitable, with internal projections showing losses continuing until at least 2028 as it invests heavily in compute infrastructure, including a $1.8 billion cloud deal with Akamai and partnerships to use xAI's Colossus data centers. OpenAI, by contrast, projects losses of about $14 billion in 2026 alone and does not expect profitability until 2029 to 2030, according to internal projections.

The competitive dynamics between the two AI leaders extend beyond financial metrics. Anthropic has positioned itself as the "safe, aligned, and enterprise-first" alternative, capturing about 80 percent of its revenue from enterprise accounts — a highly predictable B2B recurring revenue model that public market fund managers traditionally favor. OpenAI, meanwhile, generates a larger share from consumer subscriptions, a more volatile revenue stream.

For retail investors, neither Anthropic nor OpenAI shares are available on public markets yet. Indirect exposure can be gained through Amazon and Alphabet, both of which hold significant equity stakes in Anthropic and have committed billions in cloud infrastructure agreements using AWS Trainium and Google TPU clusters. The last time a similarly hyped AI company went public, the aftermath was mixed — SpaceX's post-IPO slide from $225 to $153 shows how quickly sentiment can shift after a mega-cap tech listing.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.