Chatting with Claude may be more thrilling than watching a SpaceX rocket blast off…at least for Wall Street. Anthropic investors expect the AI giant to hit a valuation of $2 trillion or more during its public debut planned for the fall—which would surpass SpaceX’s recent $1.77 trillion IPO to become the biggest in history, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
Is $3 trillion next?
Anthropic backers think that the company’s soaring sales justify the steep number, which is double its current ~$1 trillion valuation:
- They project Anthropic’s sales by the end of 2026 will put it on track for as much as $120 billion in annual revenue—10x what it was at the start of the year.
- Some investors say such explosive growth would justify valuing the company at $3 trillion, or 30x its annual revenue. FT notes that other AI superstars like Palantir and Nebius are trading at 55 times their annual revenue.
But there’s some reason for caution. Despite Anthropic’s top models outperforming products from rivals OpenAI and Alphabet, they’re vulnerable to <a href="https://bitcomme.com/na-leo-tv-launches-free-social-media-marketing-cohorts-for-small-businesses-nonprofits/” title=”Nā Leo TV launches free social media marketing cohorts for small businesses, nonprofits”>businesses scaling back their AI use due to the hefty price tag. Its top model, Fable, is 2.5x more expensive than a comparable tool from OpenAI.
Things are also tense with Uncle Sam: Anthropic is fighting the federal government in court over the Pentagon designating its products a supply chain risk. The Trump administration also temporarily placed export controls on the company’s most powerful models in June, alarming some customers and slowing revenue growth.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is doing its own pre-IPO shopping:It’s reportedly discussing a $6 billion deal to buy the AI software startup Decart. Decart’s know-how could help Anthropic slash the cost of training its models and enable it to design its own chips, putting it in competition with Nvidia.—SK
