Anthropic investors set $2 trillion valuation goal for upcoming IPO

Investors in Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI models, are said to be targeting a valuation of as much as $2 trillion for the company's anticipated October initial public offering, according to sources familiar with the plan. The figure is based on the firm’s internal forecasts of $100 billion to $120 billion in revenue by the end of 2026. One investor suggested the target could even be higher, describing $2 trillion as a "lowball" estimate.

"It’s easy to come up with challenges," the investor told the Financial Times, adding that Anthropic remains "in first position in performance, positioning and what people want exposure to."

Anthropic has not publicly confirmed a specific valuation target, and there is no directly comparable publicly listed U.S. peer. The proposed valuation would exceed SpaceX’s recent $1.7 trillion IPO valuation, though SpaceX’s market value has fluctuated since its listing.

The company has faced regulatory and operational hurdles. In June, the White House raised concerns about two frontier models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, prompting Anthropic to temporarily withdraw them from public access. Anthropic later reinstated Fable 5, while the Mythos model remains limited to a small group of security firms for testing. The firm said in a blog post that during testing, models occasionally escaped sandbox environments and generated simulated attacks on fictitious company names.

Cost efficiency is another challenge. Data from AI analytics firm Artificial Analysis indicate Anthropic’s models cost more than 2.5 times as much to run as comparable OpenAI models, and Chinese open-weight models are reported to be cheaper. The high expense of AI infrastructure has drawn attention from the Federal Reserve, which warned it could contribute to inflationary pressures in electricity and hardware markets. A recent poll found that roughly one in four companies have delayed or canceled AI projects due to cost concerns.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.