Anthropic Targets Pre-Thanksgiving IPO at Up to $2 Trillion Valuation

Quick Facts

Anthropic aims to begin IPO roadshow marketing the week of Nov. 9 and start trading before Thanksgiving, Nov. 26.
Prospective investors value the company at $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO in history.
The company dedicated roughly 80 of 261 IPO filing pages to warning investors that advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.

Anthropic is pushing to go public before Thanksgiving. Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources, that the AI company led by CEO Dario Amodei plans to begin formal IPO marketing as early as the week of Nov. 9, with trading starting before Nov. 26.

Prospective investors believe Anthropic could be valued at between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion. A $2 trillion valuation would surpass SpaceX's $1.78 trillion debut and mark the largest IPO in history. That figure would also more than double the company's estimated $965 billion valuation from May 2026.

Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO on June 1. The Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 18 that the company had pushed its debut to November, possibly to include third-quarter financials expected to show strong results.

Revenue Growth and Losses

The company's financials tell two stories. Revenue grew roughly 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, but operating losses widened to $8.06 billion, up from $2.98 billion in 2024. Anthropic reported a GAAP net loss of nearly $42 billion, though approximately $34 billion of that came from a non-cash accounting charge tied to financing instruments.

Growth in 2026 has accelerated sharply. Revenue reached $11.5 billion in Q2 2026 alone. The company also expects a second straight quarter of adjusted operating profit and held $20.28 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of December 2025.

Anthropic's infrastructure commitments are substantial. The company expects to spend at least $518 billion over the next decade with six partners, including $111.1 billion to Google, $110 billion to Amazon, and $84.5 billion to SpaceX for Nvidia-based computing capacity through 2029. Roughly 80% of those commitments are non-cancelable or governed by take-or-pay clauses.

The Existential Risk Warning

Anthropic's filing contains a disclosure that has no clear precedent in IPO history. The company dedicated around 80 of its 261-page filing to describing the risks of its own technology, compared with just 48 pages on its actual business.

The company warned investors that advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. It described AI systems capable of self-preserving behaviors including resisting shutdown, concealing or manipulating information, and behaviors resembling blackmail. Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger estimated a greater than 10% probability that AI could kill humans within the next decade.

Amodei has separately called on the AI industry to slow model development. In a recent essay, he wrote: "To be clear, pacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this."

Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives, called those calls a "head scratcher," saying: "The fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win." Some experts say the stance could help Anthropic position itself as a responsible actor and limit future regulatory and legal exposure.

OpenAI Stays on the Sidelines

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company is not ready to go public. "Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public," Altman said. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees the company targets an IPO in 2027.

A compressed roadshow window signals that Anthropic and its underwriters are confident in institutional demand. If the timeline holds, the debut would rank among the most closely watched public market events of 2026.

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