Anthropic Kicks Off IPO Roadshow at $965 Billion Valuation, Eyeing the Largest AI Listing Ever
The company behind Claude is officially on the clock — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan have started scheduling investor meetings for what could be a trillion-dollar public debut.
Three Key Takeaways
Valuation now exceeds OpenAI. Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H in May at a $965 billion valuation, surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion private mark for the first time. The company filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on June 1.
October listing is the target. Following a standard timeline, the public S-1 could land in August or September, with the roadshow and pricing in October or November. If all goes to plan, Anthropic would beat OpenAI — which has pushed its IPO to 2027 — to become the first near-trillion-dollar AI IPO.
Revenue remains the elephant in the room. Despite the eye-popping valuation, Anthropic's annualized revenue is reportedly in the low tens of billions, implying a price-to-sales ratio close to 100x. For comparison, Alphabet trades at roughly 7x sales. The premium is a bet on a revenue curve that hasn't materialized yet.
WangDou's Take
A $965 billion valuation at nearly 100x revenue — this isn't pricing a software company, it's pricing a religion. Claude is genuinely good, enterprise adoption is growing, but let's be blunt: if you bought all of Anthropic today, at current revenue you'd be waiting close to a century to break even. Goldman and Morgan Stanley are happy to show up because they earn underwriting fees regardless of where the stock trades six months later. The real risk lands on the institutional investors who get swept up in the roadshow slides. If market sentiment holds through October, this IPO probably works. But one decent tech selloff between now and then, and the trillion-dollar dream gets a haircut.