Anthropic's Billion-Dollar Bet: Will Wall Street Back a $2 Trillion AI Play?

Anthropic's IPO is on track to be one of the largest ever, with investor models projecting a listing above $2 trillion.

This would surpass SpaceX as the largest IPO in history and put Anthropic among the most valuable companies in the world.

The company's preliminary second-quarter revenue exceeded $11.5 billion, up from $787 million in the same quarter last year, with sequential growth of over 140%.

Anthropic's compute cost per revenue dollar decreased to 56 cents in the second quarter, down from 71 cents in the first quarter, indicating a profitable business.

Investors project annualized revenue of $100 billion to $120 billion by December, which would justify a valuation of around 20 times forward revenue.

However, skeptics point out that Amazon carries a market capitalization near $2.9 trillion on quarterly revenue above $200 billion and net income above $60 billion, making Anthropic's valuation seem less justifiable.