Invest2 publishersIndependently confirmed3 min readPublished Updated
New Constructs values Anthropic at $150 billion against $2 trillion IPO talk
New Constructs values Anthropic at $150 billion, less than a tenth of the roughly $2 trillion market cap discussed for its Nasdaq listing. The bear case rests on reported losses, and the price will depend on whether Anthropic's own revenue claims hold up in the prospectus.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Reuters, citing a leaked copy of the prospectus, reported that Anthropic had $4.6 billion of revenue in 2025 and a net loss of $42 billion.
- New Constructs says a $2 trillion valuation would require Anthropic to earn about double Nvidia's net income of more than $190 billion over the past four quarters.
- Anthropic has not made its prospectus public, and New Constructs built its estimate from reported figures without seeing the filing.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- contradiction Anthropic's July run-rate claim and the leaked 2025 revenue cannot describe the same line of business, so the $2 trillion talk and the $150 billion estimate are pricing different companies.
- cost A buyer at $2 trillion is paying for a turn from a $42 billion loss to more than $380 billion of annual profit, a swing of more than $422 billion a year.
- exposure Public buyers would supply the liquidity New Constructs says the listing exists to give Anthropic's private backers, so any overpayment at the offering price falls on them.
Anthropic's two revenue figures do not fit together. A sevenfold rise to a $65 billion run rate [17] means the run rate a year earlier, around July 2025, was roughly $9.3 billion [27]. Six months at that pace, before any further growth, comes to about $4.6 billion [28], the same as the leaked total for all of 2025 [3]. On those numbers, January through June produced no revenue at all. Either the two figures measure different things or one of them is wrong, and the sources do not say how either is defined. Anthropic did not respond to CNBC's request for comment [19].
The revenue base a buyer picks sets the multiple. At $2 trillion [1] the price is about 435 times leaked 2025 revenue [21] and about 31 times the claimed run rate [20]. Against the $100 billion annualized pace the New York Times reported Anthropic was on track to reach by the end of 2026, it is 20 times [18][22]. New Constructs' $150 billion [2] comes to about 33 times trailing revenue and 2.3 times the run rate [23].
The filing can land three ways. If it confirms revenue near the run rate and losses start to narrow, $150 billion is a price for last year's company, and the precedent is DoorDash. New Constructs named it the most ridiculous IPO of 2020 and compared it to WeWork [9]. DoorDash was worth more than $60 billion after its first day and is now worth $83 billion [10].
If the S-1 shows revenue nearer the $4.6 billion scale, a business losing about $9.10 for each dollar of revenue [26] fits the firm's WeWork call. WeWork, valued privately at $47 billion, pulled its IPO six weeks after the 2019 report and went bankrupt in 2023 [7]. Allbirds, another of its targets, opened at $4.1 billion in 2021 and this year sold its assets for an estimated $39 million [8].
The third case is revenue at the run rate with losses growing alongside it. New Constructs is arguing that case, citing widening operating losses and open-source competition [11]. "Since the arrival of open-source models, it's been clear that the closed models would struggle to generate profits," the firm wrote [12]. It also wrote that at $2 trillion the offering "presents far bigger risks and is positioned to be a far bigger rip off of U.S. capital markets" than WeWork did [14].
David Trainer, the firm's founder and chief executive, is known on Wall Street as a persistent IPO bear [15]. In 2021 he acknowledged to CNBC that "crazy stuff happens" and that the firm does not always get it right. "I can't let that bother me," he said at the time. "I have to stay true to what I think is right." [16]
I think the listing prices well above $150 billion. A buyer looking at a company that says its revenue grew sevenfold will pay for the run rate, and 2.3 times that run rate [23] is a low price for that growth if the growth is real. The counter-thesis is the firm's profit test, and New Constructs says losses are still widening [11]. An S-1 showing 2026 losses rising faster than revenue would prove me wrong on price and make $150 billion look generous.
What to watch
- How Anthropic's S-1 defines revenue, and whether its 2025 figure squares with the $65 billion run rate claimed in July.
- Whether the listing keeps to the mid-November timing Sedaily reported.
- The price range Anthropic sets for the offering, measured against the $2 trillion figure now in circulation.