Anthropic is preparing a record IPO

On Monday 26 October Anthropic, the company that develops the Claude artificial intelligence model, publicly filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the prospectus for its stock market listing. Its shares will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. The price and the number of shares have not been announced. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company could raise 100 billion dollars or more, at a valuation of 1.5 to 2 trillion. The paper reports that the listing is planned for the week beginning 16 November.

If the figures are confirmed, it will be the largest stock market listing ever, larger even than the SpaceX IPO in June.

How it compares with the largest IPOs

For almost seven years the record belonged to Saudi Aramco, which raised 29.4 billion dollars in 2019. In June 2026 SpaceX more than doubled it, with 75 billion. An offering of 100 billion would be a third larger than the SpaceX record.

In May, according to press reports, private investors valued Anthropic at 965 billion dollars. Between May and June the company raised 45.7 billion through new preferred shares. By 30 June it had raised 141.1 billion in total. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering. Twenty other banks are in the syndicate, among them the European banks BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS.

The revenue behind the valuation

Claude became commercially available in the first quarter of 2023. In the first quarter of 2025 Anthropic's revenue was 376 million dollars and in the fourth quarter 2.0 billion. In the second quarter of 2026 it reached 11.6 billion, more than two and a half times the revenue for the whole of 2025. In the same quarter the company made an operating profit of 974 million, while every quarter of 2025 ended with an operating loss.

On 30 June more than 6,000 customers had paid 100,000 dollars or more over the previous twelve months. A year earlier the number was more than 600. Revenue depends on new models: according to the S-1, the Claude versions released in the six months to 30 September brought in more than 80% of third-quarter revenue.

Why it shows an 80 billion loss

In the first half of 2026 Anthropic's net loss reached 80.7 billion dollars. Almost all of it comes from an accounting entry, not from the company's operations. Amazon holds Anthropic notes with a face value of 6.2 billion that convert into shares at a fixed price agreed in 2023 and 2024. The company records them at their fair value, meaning the value they would have if they changed hands today. As Anthropic's valuation rose, so did the value of the notes, to 108.6 billion on 30 June. Together with related items, that increase was recorded as an expense of 81.1 billion in the half year. No cash left the company.

Why it needs so much capital

Anthropic's largest cost is compute, meaning the data centres and chips on which its models are trained and run. In the first half of 2026 it cost 8.9 billion dollars. For the coming years the company has signed long-term agreements with the largest suppliers in the market. One of them is SpaceX, through its subsidiary SpaceXAI, for compute powered by Nvidia chips.

Each of the five largest agreements described in the S-1 is worth between 44.9 and 161.2 billion dollars. On 30 June Anthropic held cash of 112.4 billion and short-term investments of 19.3 billion. According to the S-1, the money from the offering will also go into compute and infrastructure.

Who will control the company

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation (PBC) under Delaware law. Its board must balance the financial interests of shareholders with the interests of those the company affects and with its stated purpose, the responsible development of advanced artificial intelligence for the long-term benefit of humanity. After the listing four classes of shares will be outstanding:

1. Class A. One vote per share. Only these will trade on the Nasdaq.
2. Class N. No votes. They are held mainly by strategic partners such as Amazon.
3. Class F. A single share, held by a company owned by the seven founders. It carries 50.1% of the votes on all matters put to shareholders.
4. Class T. A single share, held by the Long-Term Benefit Trust, a trust with five trustees who have no financial interest in the company. Through it the trust elects a majority of the board.

Class A shareholders will vote, but the founders will hold a majority of the votes and the trust will elect a majority of the board. Control therefore rests not on shares with multiple votes, as at Meta, but on two single shares with special rights.

What it means for European investors

According to the S-1, the offering includes public offerings outside the United States, among them in certain countries of the European Economic Area. In the European countries of the offering shares will also be offered to retail investors, under a separate prospectus. That prospectus is expected to be approved by the regulator of one of those countries, which have not been named yet. The company does not currently intend to list the shares on any European exchange.

For those who invest through ETFs, what matters is whether and when Anthropic joins the US indices. The Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500 apply very different rules.

1. Nasdaq-100. A new listing enters through a fast track if its market value at the end of its seventh trading day ranks it among the 40 largest companies in the index. Inclusion usually follows after fifteen trading days, as happened with SpaceX. For weighting, the index counts only listed share classes, so not the Class N shares.
2. S&P 500. It requires twelve months of trading and positive net income under GAAP, the US accounting standards, both in the latest quarter and in total over the latest four. The accounting loss on the notes counts there too.

The Logifin ETF Hub shows which index each US equity ETF tracks.

What remains open

1. The price range and the number of shares. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company could announce them in about two weeks. They will determine the size of the offering and the valuation.
2. The European countries in the offering. They will appear in the European prospectus once it is approved.
3. The third-quarter figures. Revenue to 30 September still appears as a blank in the S-1.

What to take away

• According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic could raise 100 billion dollars or more, which would exceed the 75 billion SpaceX record. The official figures have not been announced.
• Revenue in the second quarter of 2026 reached 11.6 billion dollars, more than thirty times the first quarter of 2025. The 80.7 billion loss for the half year is almost entirely an accounting one.
• The offering is also open to European retail investors, but the shares will trade only on the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq-100 could add them a few weeks after the listing, while the S&P 500 requires twelve months and GAAP profits.