Revenue has surged 14-fold, Anthropic is sprinting towards a $2 trillion IPO, yet hidden signs of a valuation bubble are emerging.

When OpenAI is overwhelmed by the departures of senior executives and the listing timetable, its top rival Anthropic is rushing toward the public market with a set of almost exaggerated figures — and is expected to rewrite the record of "the largest IPO in history".

Q2 Revenue Exceeds 110 Billion USD

According to Bloomberg's report on August 14, Anthropic disclosed to potential investors that its revenue in the second quarter of 2026 increased by at least 14 times year-on-year, with preliminary data exceeding 11.5 billion USD. For comparison, the company's revenue in the same period of 2025 was 787 million USD, and 4.73 billion USD in the first quarter of 2026. The document also shows that Anthropic achieved positive adjusted operating profit for the first time in the second quarter of 2026.

What is more critical is the growth curve. According to Bloomberg data, Anthropic's annualized run-rate revenue exceeded 47 billion USD in May, while the figure was about 9 billion USD at the end of 2025. Supporters predict that Anthropic's annualized revenue will reach 100 billion to 120 billion USD by the end of 2026.

This growth is supported by external capital: in 2026 alone, venture capital funds, sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors have invested nearly 100 billion USD in Anthropic.

Enterprise-level APIs are the main battlefield. Anthropic has focused on enterprise customers and API calls since its founding. According to the Financial Times, at the time of its Series G financing in February 2026, the number of its enterprise customers had exceeded 500, with each spending more than 1 million USD per year, and the number broke through 1,000 a few weeks later. Data from payment group Ramp shows that as of June 2026, 34.4% of U.S. enterprises pay for Anthropic, exceeding the 32.3% for OpenAI.

Sprinting for "The Largest IPO in History"

Anthropic has confidentially submitted its S-1 listing application to the SEC in June 2026 and entered the quiet period. According to the Financial Times, its investors expect the company to go public in October 2026, with a valuation that may reach 2 trillion USD or even higher. If it comes true, it will surpass the 1.77 trillion USD record set by SpaceX when it went public in June (at that time, SpaceX issued about 555.6 million shares at 135 USD per share, raising about 75 billion USD), becoming the largest IPO in history. Anthropic is working with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to advance the listing process.

The current valuation is also rising sharply. Anthropic completed its financing in May at a valuation of 965 billion USD (led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and HSG), surpassing OpenAI for the first time. In the secondary market, its transaction valuation has soared to 1.5 trillion USD (up 25% from last month according to Business Insider), and "almost no one is willing to sell" — there are far more buyers than sellers. In contrast, OpenAI's valuation in the secondary market hovers at about 852 billion USD, with more abundant supply.

Now, the latest rumor says that Anthropic will target a 2 trillion USD valuation for its IPO. Although the Financial Times pointed out that Anthropic's executives have not even given a valuation target in private conversations, the 2 trillion USD figure is the investors' calculation based on their own financial models: assuming an annual growth rate of about 800%, even with a 30x price-to-sales ratio (PS), the corresponding market value can reach 3 trillion USD.

Valuation Dilemma: Can Core Business Support a 2 Trillion USD Valuation?

Fortune magazine raised a sharp question: Anthropic's 2 trillion USD IPO expectation "is not supported by figures". According to its report, the company has not yet achieved any net profit; according to the common valuation multiples of large companies in the Nasdaq 100 Index, Anthropic needs to achieve an annual profit of 59 billion to 79 billion USD to match the 2 trillion USD valuation — and it is still far from this goal. As a reference, Amazon's Q2 revenue was 200.6 billion USD, net profit was 62.6 billion USD, and its valuation was about 2.86 trillion USD.

The risk list is also not short: litigation with the U.S. Department of Defense (the local Department of Defense once listed it as a supply chain risk); in June, its flagship models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were temporarily removed from the shelves due to export controls of the local Department of Commerce (the restriction was lifted after more than two weeks). According to Artificial Analysis, the cost of using its leading model is more than 2.5 times that of OpenAI's flagship, and the cost of Chinese open-source alternatives is only a small part of it. Furthermore, according to Ramp data, current enterprise AI spending is close to the budget ceiling.

Big Short Investor Warns: The AI Bull Market Rests on Two Companies

The market's concerns go beyond valuation. Steve Eisman, the investment guru and the real-life prototype of *The Big Short*, warned on CNBC's *Fast Money* that the "Achilles' heel" of AI trading is exactly Anthropic and OpenAI. He calculated that about 70% of the AI-related revenue of giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle comes from these two companies, accounting for about 25% to 35% of cloud revenue. Once cheaper open-source models from China (such as Moonshot AI's Kimi) seize market share and trigger a price war, "we are in trouble". Another *The Big Short* figure Michael Burry has shorted a number of AI beneficiary stocks including NVIDIA, questioning that part of the demand comes from "circular financing" rather than end users.

Anthropic is now at the critical point of "achieving both growth and profitability": the comparable profit that turned positive for the first time in the second quarter, the rocket-like revenue curve, and the leading IPO timetable all make it look more stable than its rivals. But when a 2 trillion USD valuation needs nearly 80 billion USD in annual profit to endorse it, and Chinese open-source models are approaching with price advantages, the real test of this "largest IPO in history" may not be at the moment of listing, but whether it can deliver financial reports matching the myth every quarter after listing.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Business" (ID: InnoBusiness), author: Tech Business, published with authorization from 36Kr.