Anthropic’s IPO: When exceptional growth meets exceptional expectations
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Daniele Antonucci
Daniele Antonucci is a managing director, head of investment and chief strategist at Quintet Private Bank. Based in Luxembourg, he chairs the investment committee, owning performance outcomes, and has responsibilities across research and strategy, asset allocation, portfolio management and investment communications.
Daniele’s work brings together global macro strategy with investment decision-making and thought leadership. He leads specialists across asset classes and solutions, and formulates and communicates investment views and the economic and market outlook to financial advisors, clients, senior stakeholders and the media.
Daniele joined Quintet in 2020 as chief economist and macro strategist, subsequently becoming co-head of investment and chief investment officer. He previously served as chief euro area economist at Morgan Stanley in London, having also gained international experience with other global investment banks, helped deliver strategic partnerships with leading asset managers such as BlackRock, and held positions at economic consultancies, rating agencies and think tanks.
Daniele completed the High Performance Leadership Programme at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, earned a master’s degree in economics from Duke University and graduated from Sapienza University of Rome. A lecturer at the Luxembourg School of Business, he is a published author in economics journals, a frequent contributor to global investment media, a speaker on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, and an ECB Shadow Council member.
What you need to know
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Anthropic’s planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a landmark moment for AI. Its revenue and customer growth have been extraordinary, showing how quickly demand for advanced AI is turning into a substantial commercial business.
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That growth comes at an extraordinary cost. Anthropic has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on computing capacity, while its future valuation would require investors to have considerable confidence that today’s investment eventually produces sustainable cash flow.
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For now, we prefer established technology platforms. They give us exposure to the growth of AI, but with broader revenues, strong balance sheets and substantial cash flows to help fund the enormous investment required.
A landmark moment for AI
On Monday 26 October, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of AI models, published its registration document ahead of a planned listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It is the first of the major US frontier AI labs to file publicly and could become one of the largest IPOs of all time.
The precise terms are still unknown. Anthropic has yet to disclose the price range, the number of shares on offer or the first day of trading. Market commentary suggests the listing could take place before the end of November, although deals of this size do not always follow a fixed timetable.
While those details will be important, the filing already gives us plenty to consider. Above all, it reveals a company growing at extraordinary speed, alongside the enormous investment required to keep it there.
Growth on an extraordinary scale
Our biggest takeaway from the prospectus is the sheer speed of top-line growth. Anthropic’s revenue has grown from tens of millions of dollars in 2023 to several billion in 2025. In the first half of 2026 alone, revenue was already well into double-digit billions. Customer growth tells a similar story, with the number of businesses spending at least USD 100,000 a year increasing more than tenfold in just one year.
It is incredibly rare to see a company scale this quickly.
There are also signs of progress towards profitability. Anthropic’s headline loss largely reflects non-cash fair value charges on convertible instruments, which will ultimately convert into shares. The underlying business was still loss-making in the first half of 2026, but it recorded its first ever quarterly operating profit in the second quarter.
That progress strengthens the growth story. It also needs to be viewed alongside the sheer scale of what Anthropic plans to spend in the years ahead.
Staying at the frontier comes at a price
Anthropic has signed multi-year agreements for computing capacity that commit it to spending hundreds of billions of dollars, many times its current annual revenue. Remaining at the frontier of AI is an enormously expensive undertaking.
This is one reason these listings are about more than creating liquidity for existing shareholders. As we noted in June, when our colleagues first wrote about mega-IPOs, they can also provide capital to help fund the heavy investment required for future growth.
That creates the central question for prospective investors. Anthropic has demonstrated that it can grow at exceptional speed. The investment case will depend on whether that growth can ultimately support the enormous spending commitments required to sustain it.
What will investors be paying for?
We do not yet know the answer in dollars and cents. No price range has been announced, but market commentary suggests Anthropic could achieve a market capitalisation of around USD 1.5 trillion to USD 2 trillion at flotation.
A valuation on that scale assumes rapid growth continues for some time and that today’s very large investment programme eventually produces durable free cash flow. Yet Anthropic’s recent pace of growth has come from a relatively small base, and management expects the growth rate to slow over time. Revenue also remains concentrated, with a small number of large customers accounting for a significant share of sales.
Investors will also need to consider Anthropic’s governance. Its founders will retain voting control, giving public shareholders limited influence over the company’s direction. We believe founder control has often been positive for long-term shareholder value, although there may be times when the interests of shareholders come second to those of the founders. Anthropic is also a ‘public benefit corporation’, requiring it to balance shareholders’ financial interests with its stated mission.
Our take: quality and staying power
Anthropic is clearly an impressive business, and we consider its models to be at the forefront of AI. But the terms of the offering will matter when assessing whether that translates into an attractive investment.
For now, our preference remains with the large, established technology platforms. They combine leading-edge AI capabilities with existing customer relationships, wide distribution, high switching costs and established cloud infrastructure. They can also fund future infrastructure investment from a much broader range of sources, supported by strong balance sheets, investment-grade credit ratings and very large operating cash flows.
We will continue to assess Anthropic as more information becomes available, including the terms of the offering, independent research and disclosures from peers and competitors.