As Anthropic prepares for what could be one of the biggest IPOs on record, investors are looking far ahead to decide how much the AI company could be worth.
Anthropic is expected to generate $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue in 2028, sources close to the development told Reuters. This is even bigger than its current $47 billion annual revenue run rate, which it reported in May.
Valuing companies on future potential is common
Evaluating a fast-growing company based on its future value is not aberrant. “Backers of Cerebras Systems cited 2028 revenue expectations in the runup to the firm’s IPO this year, and SpaceX projections extended as far as 2029 before the company went public at a record valuation in June,” the people said.
The sources noted that cloud infrastructure company Cloudflare, enterprise software company Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are among the public companies being considered as reference points while drawing the numbers.
Palantir is valued at 53 times this year’s expected revenue, making it one of Wall Street’s priciest stocks. SpaceX and Cloudflare both trade at 41.6 times expected 2026 revenue, according to LSEG data.
Anthropic’s revenue jumps 14-fold
Established companies are usually valued based on EBITDA because it provides investors with a clearer idea of the business’s profitability.
Anthropic informed that its second-quarter revenue jumped at least 14-fold compared with the same period a year ago, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News.
The Claude chatbot maker reported a preliminary revenue figure of more than $11.5 billion in its latest completed quarter, compared to $787 million in the corresponding period in 2025, and $4.73 billion in the first quarter of this year, the documents show. The second quarter of 2026 saw Anthropic report positive adjusted operating income, according to the documents.
This rapid growth is why investors are willing to look as far ahead as 2028 when valuing the company.
Even then, its current profits do not show what the company could earn once it becomes much bigger. Anthropic is spending large sums on GPUs, computing power, AI model training and deployment, and hiring workers. These costs are needed for its rapid growth, but they could become a smaller part of its revenue as the company expands.
“Could they (Anthropic) get a $2 trillion valuation, yeah, they could, and I just wonder if it would stay there over time,” David Merkel, a principal at investment firm Aleph Investments told Reuters
“Does it (AI) really produce so much additional productivity… These are just questions that we have to ask if we were thinking of pricing this, buying this.”
