Anthropic’s march toward the public markets has turned into a high-stakes wager on AI dominance. Investors see a record IPO in the making; the risks surrounding the company’s growth story are getting harder to ignore.

The momentum began with a May funding round that valued the Claude maker at $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI, after the company said annualized revenue had topped $47 billion. By June, Anthropic had filed SEC paperwork for a listing, while investors poured nearly $100 billion into the business during 2026. Backers now anticipate an October flotation worth $2 trillion or more, underpinned by forecasts of $100 billion to $120 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026.¹

Their case is bluntly bullish. One investor argued that, if Anthropic were growing 800% annually, even a 30-times-revenue valuation could imply a $3 trillion company.¹ Another said the company remained “in first position in performance, positioning, and what people want exposure to.”¹

Secondary markets have reinforced that optimism. In the past month, traders said Anthropic shares had changed hands at valuations as high as $1.5 trillion, with buyers vastly outnumbering sellers as investors try to get in before the IPO. “Even at that number, there aren’t a lot of sellers out there,” said Rainmaker Securities chief executive Glen Anderson.²

But the same timeline contains the warning signs. Commerce Department export controls briefly forced Anthropic to pull its leading Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models in June, unsettling customers and contributing to a slowdown in revenue growth that month. The company also faces litigation with the Defense Department, price-conscious corporate users and sharper competition from OpenAI and cheaper Chinese open-weight models.¹

That leaves Anthropic with a familiar private-versus-public-market test: scarcity can drive a frenzied secondary trade, but public investors will demand proof that premium pricing and extraordinary growth can survive a rapidly commoditising AI race. Buyers may be chasing the IPO; they are also chasing very few available shares. “With an IPO coming soon, you don’t have a lot of willing sellers,” said Augment president Adam Crawley.²