Anthropic's $2 trillion IPO asks buyers to pay about 31 times its July revenue run rate

Scaled to sales, the operating loss shrank. It grew about 2.7 times in 2025 while revenue grew about 11.9 times ^[1], so each dollar of revenue carried roughly $7.72 of operating loss in 2024 and $1.75 in 2025 ^[2]. About $34 billion of the $42 billion net loss sits below the operating line ^[3].

The 2025 accounts are already out of date. The revenue run rate went from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to more than $65 billion by July 2026 ^[7], a rise of roughly 7.2 times in seven months ^[10]. At $2 trillion, the offering values Anthropic at about 31 times that run rate and about 435 times its 2025 revenue ^[4]. Investors in the pre-IPO talks project $100 billion to $120 billion of revenue by the end of 2026 and $190 billion to $200 billion by 2028, according to Crypto Briefing ^[8]. On their figures the multiple falls to between 17 and 20 times this year's sales and to about 10 times 2028's ^[5].

The costs run through compute. Revenue plus the operating loss implies about $12.7 billion of 2025 operating costs. Compute, at $7.33 billion, was roughly 58 percent of that ^[9]. The $518 billion of obligations in the prospectus Reuters saw ^[11] equals about eight years of the July run rate ^[6]. A $100 billion raise covers about 19 percent of it, leaving 81 percent to be paid from future revenue or more financing ^[7].

For a buyer, the outcomes split on that run rate. If it keeps compounding toward the investor projections, the commitments are capacity bought ahead of demand and the multiple falls toward 10 times sales by 2028 ^[5]. If it stalls near $65 billion, public holders own a company priced at 31 times sales that has committed about eight years of revenue to cloud and computing obligations ^[4][6]. Reuters calls the listing a major test of public-market appetite for AI ^[18]. I think the narrower test, or rather the one the accounts can actually inform, is whether the run rate holds, because the 2025 figures show operating losses shrinking against sales ^[2]. That view is wrong if the 2026 operating loss grows faster than revenue and pushes the loss per dollar of sales back above $1.75 ^[2].

Anthropic is selling stock to the public while its rival holds back. OpenAI also filed confidentially in June, but Sam Altman said in September it will not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns ^[15]. OpenAI said in June that "there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company" ^[16]. Anthropic's May round had already put it ahead of OpenAI on private valuation ^[17].