Anthropic could list on Nasdaq as early as October, with a valuation potentially reaching $2 trillion. Of greater interest is the company's expectation to report adjusted profitability for the second consecutive quarter this period.
According to foreign media reports, Anthropic has selected Nasdaq as the listing venue for its potential initial public offering (IPO), targeting a listing as early as October.
Insiders revealed that the valuation for the Claude developer's IPO could reach $2 trillion or higher, with fundraising scales potentially matching or even exceeding SpaceX's IPO this year.
Anthropic has not yet publicly filed its prospectus. The Financial Times reported that the company originally planned to release the prospectus last week but ultimately provided documents to a select group of investors first, with formal disclosure to follow after addressing relevant questions. Business Insider noted that the company must disclose financial data at least 15 days before launching investor roadshows.
Revenue surges; adjusted profitability achieved for two consecutive quarters
The most significant change for Anthropic prior to its listing is the rapid improvement in growth speed and profitability. The Financial Times reported that the company has indicated to some shareholders that its adjusted operating profit will be positive for the second consecutive quarter this period, a metric that excludes costs such as stock-based compensation.
In the second quarter of this year, Anthropic's revenue increased fourteenfold year-on-year to $11.5 billion, marking its first recorded adjusted operating profit. By the end of July, the company's annualized revenue reached $65 billion, more than six times the $9 billion recorded at the end of last year. Bloomberg also reported that, based on current operational performance, its annualized revenue has exceeded $65 billion.
Two insiders stated that Anthropic's gross margin exceeds 80% before deducting revenue shares paid to distribution partners such as Amazon and model training costs.
Joey Brookhart, an analyst at SemiAnalysis AI Lab, stated that some investors expect Anthropic's annualized revenue to reach $120 billion by the end of this year, and nearly triple that level by the end of 2027. However, these are investor projections and not official corporate performance guidance.
Anthropic is currently valued at approximately $965 billion. The Financial Times reported that its IPO valuation could reach $2 trillion or higher. Bloomberg stated that the company aims for the IPO fundraising scale to match or exceed that of SpaceX.
SpaceX (SPCX.O) completed a record-breaking $86.3 billion IPO on Nasdaq in June this year, achieving a valuation of $1.75 trillion. Subsequently, SK Hynix (SKHY.O) raised $26.5 billion through its July listing on Nasdaq. According to Bloomberg data, U.S. IPOs have raised $160.6 billion this year, excluding SPACs and other financial instruments, marking the highest level since 2021.
Earlier this month, Anthropic was also preparing to finalize a $15 billion revolving credit facility, although Bloomberg did not specify the intended use of the funds.
OpenAI postpones IPO while Anthropic continues its push for public listing
As Anthropic advances toward its public listing, controversies over AI safety are rapidly intensifying. On September 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk all publicly supported slowing the pace of AI model capability enhancements.
Amodei proposed that the industry needs to decelerate the rate of improvement in AI model capabilities. Previously, a former Anthropic employee warned that the risk of AI causing human extinction could exceed 10%, further propelling AI safety issues into public discourse.
OpenAI has adopted a different capital market strategy from Anthropic. Altman confirmed to Fortune that although OpenAI secretly filed IPO documents in June, the company will not go public this year. He believes that 2026 is not an appropriate time for an IPO given the heightened concerns over AI safety.
The Financial Times also reported that employees at leading AI labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI have been privately discussing how to manage AI development more safely in recent weeks. These discussions have been driven by recent security incidents, researchers' concerns about the capabilities of new models, and industry assessments of regulatory intensity.
This presents Anthropic's IPO with a direct contradiction. On one hand, the company is rushing to the public market backed by rapid growth and improved profit margins; on the other, its CEO is publicly calling for a slowdown in the development of AI capabilities. Slowing model training could reduce costs by billions of dollars, but it might also give competitors more time to catch up.
Nasdaq bets on the next wave of AI listings
Anthropic's choice of Nasdaq is also significant for exchange competition. While the New York Stock Exchange has secured many mega-IPOs in the past, Nasdaq has long held an advantage in the technology sector's listing market and has recently landed major deals such as SpaceX this year.
Listing on Nasdaq is also one of the prerequisites for the company’s future inclusion in the Nasdaq-100 Index. However, there is currently no clear evidence that choosing Nasdaq over the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) would result in systematic differences in long-term stock price performance.
The more pronounced differences between the two exchanges lie in their opening mechanisms and market-making structures. When large IPOs involve substantial trading volumes, the price discovery process may experience delays. For instance, Nasdaq encountered technical glitches on Facebook’s first day of trading in 2012.