Anthropic wants Wall Street to believe a number that, on paper, still sounds almost fictional: somewhere between $190 billion and $200 billion in annual revenue by 2028. According to a Reuters exclusive, that internal forecast is the load-bearing wall behind the company’s push toward a near-$2 trillion valuation ahead of its initial public offering, and it’s the figure bankers and prospective investors are already using to justify a price tag that would have sounded absurd just a couple of years ago. The Anthropic IPO valuation conversation, in other words, isn’t really about what the AI lab is worth today. It’s a bet on what it might be worth two years from now.
Key takeaways
Anthropic’s internal forecast projects $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue by 2028, the basis for a valuation approaching $2 trillion.
Revenue run rate jumped from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to roughly $47 billion by May 2026.
Second-quarter 2026 revenue is projected at least $10.9 billion, more than double the prior quarter, alongside a forecast first quarterly operating profit of about $559 million.
Bankers are reportedly using two-years-forward enterprise-value-to-revenue multiples, comparing Anthropic to companies like Palantir, SpaceX and Cloudflare.
David Merkel of Aleph Investments questioned whether a $2 trillion price tag would hold over time.
Anthropic’s Revenue Growth and IPO Valuation Ambitions
The core question behind Anthropic’s IPO valuation target is whether a company can quadruple its revenue twice in a little over two years and keep doing it. That’s essentially what the 2028 forecast assumes.
Unprecedented 2028 Revenue Forecast
Reuters reported that the previously unreported $190 billion to $200 billion figure for 2028 is central to how bankers and investors are pricing the company ahead of its stock market debut. It’s a number so large that it dwarfs the annual revenue of most established tech giants, let alone a company that only recently turned profitable on a quarterly basis.
Recent Revenue Run Rate Acceleration
The growth story so far does lend some weight to the ambition. Anthropic’s revenue run rate stood at roughly $47 billion as of May 2026, up sharply from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. That’s a fivefold jump in under five months, and it’s the kind of trajectory that gives bankers room to argue the 2028 forecast is extrapolation rather than pure fantasy. Second-quarter 2026 revenue is projected to come in at least $10.9 billion, more than double the previous quarter’s total.
Valuation Methodology and Market Comparisons
Rather than valuing Anthropic on what it earns right now, bankers are reportedly applying a two-years-forward enterprise-value-to-revenue multiple, pricing the company against its projected 2028 haul instead of its current books. It’s an unusual approach for public markets, but not an unprecedented one.
Two-Years-Forward Enterprise-Value-to-Revenue Multiples
This forward-leaning method was also used ahead of the public listings of Cerebras and SpaceX, both companies whose growth curves made trailing-revenue math look almost irrelevant. For Anthropic, the logic is similar: value the destination, not the current mile marker.
Comparison to Other High-Growth Companies
Reuters noted that comparable high-growth companies trade at multiples ranging from roughly 41.6 to 53 times expected revenue. Palantir trades at close to 53 times its expected 2026 revenue, while SpaceX and Cloudflare sit near 41.6 times. Apply multiples in that range to Anthropic’s projected 2028 revenue, and the headline figures pushing toward $2 trillion start to look internally consistent, even if they still require a considerable leap of faith about what happens between now and then.
Profitability Outlook and Cost Challenges
For a company that has spent most of its existence burning through cash, the idea of turning a quarterly profit marks a genuine shift, though the underlying cost structure remains a real constraint on how far that profitability can stretch.
First Quarterly Operating Profit Forecast
Anthropic is reportedly forecasting its first quarterly operating profit at approximately $559 million, a milestone that would mark a meaningful inflection point for a business defined until now by aggressive spending rather than earnings.
High GPU and Compute Costs Press Margins
The catch sits in the cost base. Heavy spending on GPUs, compute infrastructure and model training continues to weigh on current margins, and the bullish case for the Anthropic pre IPO valuation assumes those costs shrink as a share of revenue while the business scales. If that cost efficiency doesn’t materialize on schedule, the entire two-years-forward pricing logic starts to wobble, since the whole exercise effectively trades present-day profitability for a bet on future size.
Risks and Market Uncertainties Surrounding Anthropic’s IPO
Why does this matter beyond Anthropic itself? Because the method being used here — pricing a company almost entirely on a forecast years out — sets a template that other AI labs preparing to go public will likely be measured against, for better or worse.
Market Pricing Depends on Future Revenue and Growth Sustainability
The whole calculation borrows heavily from the future. It assumes the enthusiasm currently surrounding Anthropic survives long enough to actually meet the revenue it’s pricing in today. That’s a meaningful assumption when the underlying number — $200 billion in annual revenue — has never been reached by an AI company on anything close to this timeline.
Investor Skepticism on Valuation Sustainability
Not everyone buys into the durability of that math. “Could they get a $2 trillion valuation, yeah they could and I just wonder if it would stay there over time,” said David Merkel of Aleph Investments, capturing the gap between what a hot market will pay on the day of a listing and what it might tolerate a year or two later. It’s a skepticism that cuts to the heart of the Anthropic valuation IPO debate: momentum can justify a number in the moment, but sustaining that number requires the forecast to actually land.
Competitive and Market Condition Risks
Cheaper rivals are already pressing on the economics that underpin these kinds of valuations, and a two-years-forward multiple is only ever as strong as the year it’s pointed toward. The broader risk for Anthropic isn’t just whether it hits $200 billion — it’s whether market conditions, competitive pricing pressure, and investor appetite all stay aligned long enough for that forecast to translate into a lasting stock price rather than a one-day headline.
Where the Valuation Talk Stands Now
The number climbing toward $2 trillion didn’t appear overnight. Anthropic has already drawn investor offers valuing it at $800 billion, and separate reporting has pointed to figures closer to $900 billion in connection with a mooted $50 billion funding round. The IPO chatter has since pushed that ceiling toward $2 trillion — a figure that would have sounded implausible not long ago and still depends almost entirely on numbers nobody outside the company can yet verify.
According to CNBC, Anthropic confidentially filed its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, and CFO Krishna Rao has been leading early investor meetings since. Those sessions, according to people familiar with them, have stayed high-level, covering the Claude family of AI models, the development of the Claude Code assistant, the company’s position in the enterprise market and its management team — without yet drilling into specific financials or a formal valuation figure. No official timeline for the listing has been disclosed.
Anthropic may well hit somewhere near $200 billion in revenue by 2028, and its recent run of results gives that ambition more credibility than it would have carried a year ago. But for now, the market is effectively being asked to price the company as though that outcome is already locked in — two full years before the receipts would actually come due.
The Best “Go Paid” Deal on Substack! You Get REAL Stuff!!
Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of Etienne’s new book: To See the Cage Is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the https://artofliberty.org/store/.
Go paid at the $50 a year level, and we will send you a free paperback edition of Etienne’s new book: To See the Cage Is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many OR “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! OR a 64GB Liberator flash drive if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.
Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get a signed high-resolution hardcover of “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History... Exposed! + Liberator flash drive + a signed high-resolution hardcover of Etienne’s new book: To See the Cage Is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many + everything else in our “Everything Bundle” of the best in voluntaryist thought delivered domestically. International pays shipping. Our only option for signed copies besides catching Etienne at an event.
I wonder how much the public dumb money will be "indexed" into this mess. Didn't the Chinese just slay the US AI creators?