Anthropic IPO valuation to hinge on $200 billion 2028 revenue bet

Anthropic is projecting revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028, according to two people familiar with its financials, as it prepares for what could be one of the largest IPOs on record. The figure far exceeds the $47 billion annual revenue run rate the AI firm disclosed in May and underscores the growth investors are being asked to underwrite. Reuters reports that bankers and investors are applying enterprise value-to-revenue multiples to the 2028 forecast, an approach typically used for high-growth software companies that have yet to reach mature profit levels.

Using projections two years ahead is less common but reflects the speed of Anthropic's expansion and the challenge of setting benchmarks for a company still spending heavily on GPUs, model training and hiring. Livemint notes that Palantir, Cloudflare and SpaceX are being considered as reference points for pricing, with Palantir trading at 53 times this year's expected revenue. Anthropic's second-quarter 2026 revenue is estimated at $10.9 billion or more, more than double the previous quarter, and the firm is on track for its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million, according to Bloomberg.

The Hindu quotes David Merkel of Aleph Investments, who said: "Could they get a $2 trillion valuation? Yeah, they could. I just wonder if it would stay there over time." OpenAI, which competes with Anthropic for business customers, has meanwhile doubled its annualised revenue run rate to over $40 billion, driven by AI coding tools and subscriptions. Both companies have filed confidential IPO paperwork, Anthropic is expected to go public as soon as this fall, ahead of OpenAI.