Both Anthropic and OpenAI filed confidential S-1s in June, indicating that they're planning IPOs in the not-too-distant future. OpenAI's CFO recently indicated that its IPO won't take place until 2027, as the company raised $122 billion in fresh capital earlier this year and isn't in any hurry.
On the other hand, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI tools, is reportedly targeting a public debut later this year, and at an eye-popping valuation. In fact, if the reports are accurate, Anthropic could surpass SpaceX as the largest IPO of all time.
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Anthropic's IPO: What we know, and what we don't
When a company files confidentially to go public, there's a lot of information we don't know. For example, we won't see audited, detailed financials until the actual S-1 is filed. And we don't know for sure when Anthropic plans to complete its IPO or the valuation it is targeting. All we have are third-party reports.
We also don't know whether Anthropic is profitable (likely not) or when it expects to become profitable. The company has hundreds of billions of dollars in compute obligations already, and is investing aggressively to build out its capabilities.
What we do know is that Anthropic's growth has been exponential. The company had a $47 billion annualized revenue run rate in mid-May, and by the end of July, this had risen to $65 billion. Insiders expect to reach a run rate of $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year.
We also know that Anthropic raised $65 billion in a May funding round, at a $965 billion valuation. That's a sharp increase from the $380 billion valuation it received in February.
A record-breaking IPO?
According to reports, insiders are targeting an IPO in October (or shortly thereafter) at a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. This would break the record for valuation at the time of an IPO, surpassing the $1.77 trillion valuation of SpaceX (SPCX +2.19%) when it went public a few months ago.
My bold prediction for Anthropic's IPO has two parts. First, I think it will go public at a valuation significantly higher than $2 trillion, especially if it is approaching a $100 billion revenue run rate by that time. A valuation of 20 times sales is far less than where SpaceX stood at the time of its IPO, and I'd argue that Anthropic's growth is more impressive.
Second, I predict that not only will Anthropic's IPO break the valuation record, but that it will also break the record for the amount raised. The demand is there. After all, OpenAI raised $122 billion earlier this year, and that was from private equity, with far less revenue and slower growth than Anthropic is bringing to the table.
So, here's my full (admittedly bold) prediction: Anthropic will go public at a valuation of $2.2 trillion or more, and will raise at least $150 billion in its IPO, shattering SpaceX's record.
