Anthropic is preparing investors for an annual revenue of $190 to $200 billion by 2028, according to a report by the news agency Reuters. Banks and investors base this forecast on the valuation for the planned IPO in October – more than four times the last known $47 billion from May.
Banks expect unusual two-year multipliers
For the valuation of the potential IPO, banks and investors are relying on multipliers based on the expected revenue for 2028 – calculated two years into the future. This method is common among rapidly growing software companies, but a two-year time horizon is unusually broad even for that. Comparable companies include publicly traded firms like Palantir, which trades at 53 times its expected revenue for 2026, as well as Cloudflare and SpaceX, each at about 41.6 times. Multipliers of this magnitude are typically reserved for proven, not merely projected growth at tech companies – a difference analysts view as a central risk of the method. Applied to Anthropic’s revenue target for 2028, this would imply a valuation of up to $2 trillion – more than double the $965 billion from the Series H round in May. Anthropic has officially confirmed neither the revenue forecast nor a target valuation.
Revenue grows from nine to 47 billion dollars within months
The growth curve behind the forecast is already extraordinary: by the end of 2025, Anthropic’s annual revenue rate stood at around $9 billion, rising to $47 billion by May 2026. For the second quarter of 2026, the company expects at least $10.9 billion in revenue and a first operating quarterly profit of $559 million. Anthropic has thus achieved a tenfold increase in annual revenue in each of the past three years. Such a pace also consumes enormous sums for data centers and chips, which explains the high capital needs behind the planned IPO. Just in August, Google linked $200 billion in loans to chips that Anthropic is leasing. The company had already begun initial investor meetings for the IPO in July, and an official date for the October trading start is still not set.
Previous AI IPOs temper expectations
How risky the bet on distant revenue targets can be is shown by previous AI IPOs this year. The stocks of Cerebras, SpaceX and SK Hynix fell significantly from their peaks after strong debuts: Cerebras lost about 43 percent from its peak price, SpaceX about 38 percent, and SK Hynix around 14 percent. All three IPOs took place in the ongoing AI boom year of 2026, like Anthropic’s planned debut, and were initially considered successful at the start of trading before the prices dropped within weeks. Analyst David Merkel of Aleph Investments considers a $2 trillion valuation for Anthropic conceivable but points out that a forecast is not yet a financial figure filed with securities regulators. Until the actual SEC filing, it remains unclear how robust Anthropic’s internal growth assumptions really are. Other market observers voice similar caution, warning of a repeat of the pattern should Anthropic miss the forecast or infrastructure costs keep rising.
It will be decisive whether Anthropic can present sturdier figures than mere forecasts by the time of the SEC filing – and whether the October date holds, something so far only reports, not the company itself, have named. An IPO under the rumored terms would be one of the largest in technology history and a test of whether public markets will support private AI valuations at this scale.
