Anthropic goes a step further towards going public: reported to be racing for a $2 trillion valuation IPO before Thanksgiving, holding an investor day on October 14

Author: Li Dan, Wall Street Journal

New details about Anthropic's IPO plan have emerged.

On Thursday, October 1st, Eastern Time, Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the matter stating that Anthropic will hold a Pre-IPO Investor Day on October 14th with potential investors, and the company has sent invitations to a group of institutional investors; Anthropic may officially launch its IPO marketing as early as the week of November 9th, aiming to start trading before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

According to insiders, this Investor Day will take place at Anthropic's headquarters in San Francisco, where invited institutional investors will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to company executives. This event is seen as an important step for Anthropic in communicating with potential investors ahead of its public listing.

According to the current timeline, Anthropic is expected to complete its listing in November, but specific IPO arrangements may still change. This year's Thanksgiving in the United States falls on November 26th, and if the roadshow officially starts the week of November 9th, Anthropic will have the opportunity to complete the transaction before the holiday.

Scale May Rival SpaceX, Investors Estimate Nearly $2 Trillion Valuation

One major highlight of Anthropic's IPO is its issuance scale.

Bloomberg previously reported that Anthropic expects its IPO fundraising scale to match or even exceed SpaceX's record IPO. The latest reports indicate that some potential investors believe Anthropic's reasonable valuation could reach between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion.

This valuation would place Anthropic among the largest AI companies by market capitalization globally and would serve as an important reference point for capital markets in assessing the valuation levels of generative AI companies.

At the same time, competitor OpenAI has recently chosen to postpone its IPO. According to previous reports, OpenAI plans to raise at least $30 billion in new funding, targeting a valuation of around $1.4 trillion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that the company is not in a hurry to go public.

If Anthropic is the first to enter the public market, its pricing will provide an important sample for investors to reassess the valuation levels of the entire AI industry.

Corporate Clients Support Growth Story

In the eyes of potential investors, one important selling point for Anthropic is the rapid adoption by corporate clients.

Bloomberg states that although Claude's brand recognition among consumers is still not as high as OpenAI's ChatGPT, its adoption rate among enterprise users such as software developers is relatively high, which can support the sustained revenue growth that investors value.

Various institutions, including banks, hedge funds, and enterprise software companies like Salesforce, have already partnered with Anthropic to integrate its AI tools into their workflows.

This corporate market layout also constitutes an important difference between Anthropic and OpenAI. For AI companies preparing to enter the public market, the sustained usage and commercialization revenue brought by corporate clients are important indicators for investors to assess growth sustainability.

Revenue Surged Over 10 Times, But Computing Investments Result in Huge Losses

Anthropic's high valuation is built on the rapid growth of AI demand, but the company is still in a phase of large-scale investment.

Documents obtained by the media previously indicated that Anthropic's total revenue for 2025 is expected to be about $4.6 billion, far exceeding $386 million in 2024; however, the net loss during the same period is close to $42 billion, approximately five times that of the previous year.

It is important to note that this huge net loss does not fully represent Anthropic's daily operational losses. The documents show that over $34 billion comes from accounting items such as changes in the fair value of the company's liabilities; excluding these factors, Anthropic's operating loss for 2025 still exceeds $8 billion.

At the same time, Anthropic is significantly expanding its AI infrastructure. Recently, the company signed a computing resource agreement worth about $11.6 billion for a seven-year term with Akamai, further increasing future computing investments.

This also means that Anthropic needs to prove to the public market not only the rapid growth of its AI business but also how it will convert revenue growth into more stable cash flow and profitability while continuously increasing computing and infrastructure investments.

OpenAI Catching Up, AI Safety Controversies Heating Up

Anthropic's rapid rise in recent times is also facing changes in the competitive landscape.

Media reports indicate that OpenAI has seen increased sales momentum in recent months, intensifying competitive pressure on Anthropic. Both companies are at the center of discussions on AI safety, and a series of high-profile hacking incidents involving AI agents have further raised concerns about the safety risks of cutting-edge models.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article on his personal website in September advocating for a slowdown in the advancement of capabilities of cutting-edge AI models.

However, these factors have not significantly changed some potential investors' valuation expectations for Anthropic, with some still believing the company's value could reach between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion.

AI Superstars Going Public Amidst Pressure on the U.S. IPO Market

As Anthropic rushes to go public, the U.S. new stock market itself is not particularly hot.

Bloomberg data shows that excluding record large IPOs like SpaceX and SK Hynix, the weighted average return of over 100 newly listed stocks in the U.S. market this year is about -4%, significantly lagging behind the approximately 12% rise in the S&P 500 index and the approximately 20% rise in the Nasdaq 100 index during the same period.

Recently, there have also been several cases of delayed listings in the U.S. IPO market, with some companies even temporarily halting their offerings before the scheduled issuance. Against this backdrop, if Anthropic ultimately completes a large-scale IPO, it will become one of the most closely watched transactions in the U.S. new stock market this year.

Whether its listing price can gain public market recognition will also serve as an important window to observe whether the high valuations of AI super companies can be transmitted from the private market to the public market.