Anthropic’s reported $65 billion annualized revenue run rate has put fresh pressure on OpenAI—and turned the contest between the leading AI labs into a race for the public market. The numbers are eye-popping, but they are also projections, not a full year of booked revenue.

At the end of last year, Anthropic’s run rate stood at roughly $9 billion. Bloomberg-reported figures show it reached $47 billion in May and cleared $65 billion by late July, after preliminary second-quarter revenue exceeded $11.5 billion. That would place the Claude maker ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported $40 billion run rate. ¹

The comparison comes with an important qualification: the companies may calculate revenue differently. Still, investors see Anthropic’s enterprise-led acceleration as a potent signal ahead of a possible IPO. The company is reportedly meeting prospective investors for an offering that could come in September or October, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan involved. ¹

A second account describes the potential scale of the prize: Anthropic’s investors expect continued rapid growth, potentially putting 2026 revenue at $100 billion to $120 billion, while the company could seek a public valuation of at least $2 trillion. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have filed confidential IPO paperwork, but Anthropic is widely expected to reach the market first. ²

The investment case is not just about size. Atreides Management’s Gavin Baker said Anthropic had been “much more token efficient than OpenAI,” while adding that OpenAI “has closed some of the gap.” ¹ Musk amplified an even broader bullish framing, reposting an estimate that frontier-lab annual recurring revenue had crossed combined Windows and Office revenue in late June. Elon Musk (elonmusk)³

For now, the revenue race remains a moving target. But Anthropic’s reported surge has made one question harder to ignore: whether the company can convert astonishing growth into the first decisive IPO advantage.