Anthropic is preparing for what could become one of the largest initial public offerings ever, and investors are taking an unusually long-term approach to determining how much the artificial intelligence company could be worth.
Rather than focusing mainly on its current financial performance, bankers and investors are reportedly looking as far ahead as 2028, when Anthropic expects its annual revenue to reach approximately $190 billion to $200 billion.
Anthropic Targets Up to $200 Billion in 2028 Revenue
People familiar with Anthropic’s finances say the company is forecasting revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion for 2028.
That projection is significantly higher than the roughly $47 billion revenue run rate Anthropic disclosed in May and highlights the extraordinary growth expectations surrounding the AI company.
Investors evaluating the potential Anthropic IPO are reportedly using enterprise value-to-revenue multiples based on these future revenue forecasts.
Revenue-based valuation methods are commonly used for rapidly expanding technology and software businesses that have not yet reached a mature or consistent level of profitability.
However, basing an IPO valuation on revenue projections two years into the future is less conventional. The approach reflects both Anthropic’s rapid expansion and the difficulty of valuing an AI company that continues to spend heavily on computing infrastructure, model development and employees.
AI Spending Complicates Anthropic’s Valuation
Artificial intelligence companies require enormous amounts of capital to develop and operate advanced models.
Anthropic continues to invest heavily in GPUs, computing capacity, AI model training, inference infrastructure and talent. Those expenses currently place pressure on margins, making traditional earnings-based valuation methods more difficult to apply.
The wider technology sector has also faced investor concerns about the scale of AI spending, with several major technology stocks experiencing periods of weakness as markets question how quickly those investments will produce meaningful returns.
Investors considering Anthropic’s valuation are essentially betting that revenue growth will eventually outpace the cost of supporting the company’s AI infrastructure.
If that happens, Anthropic could potentially generate much stronger profit margins as its operations become more efficient and its business grows.
Other High-Growth Companies Have Used Similar Forecasts
Anthropic would not be the first rapidly expanding technology company to be valued partly on financial projections several years into the future.
Investors backing AI chip company Cerebras Systems reportedly considered its expected 2028 revenue before its IPO.
SpaceX investors also examined forecasts extending several years ahead when assessing the company before its public-market debut.
Such examples illustrate how investors may rely more heavily on future scale when evaluating companies operating in industries experiencing exceptionally rapid growth.
Cloudflare, Palantir and SpaceX Used as Valuation Comparisons
Another important part of Anthropic’s potential IPO valuation involves finding suitable publicly traded companies for comparison.
Cloudflare, Palantir and SpaceX are reportedly among the businesses being considered as potential valuation benchmarks.
Public-market comparisons are frequently used during an IPO process because they give investors an indication of how businesses with similar growth characteristics, technologies or business models are valued.
They can also help determine which revenue or earnings multiples should be applied to financial projections.
Palantir has become one of the most highly valued technology companies relative to revenue, trading at around 53 times expected annual revenue.
SpaceX and Cloudflare have also commanded very high revenue multiples, reflecting strong investor expectations about their future growth.
Why Palantir, Cloudflare and SpaceX Matter
Each of the three companies provides investors with a different perspective when assessing Anthropic.
Palantir offers a benchmark for a rapidly expanding software company with significant exposure to artificial intelligence and strong investor enthusiasm.
Cloudflare provides a comparison with a high-growth technology business operating across software and cloud infrastructure.
SpaceX, meanwhile, demonstrates how investors can assign an enormous valuation to a company based partly on expectations about its long-term scale rather than its present-day financial performance.
None of these businesses offers a perfect comparison with Anthropic, but together they provide potential reference points for investors attempting to value one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies.
Why Current Earnings May Not Tell the Full Story
More established businesses are generally valued using profitability measures such as earnings or EBITDA, which allow investors to evaluate the underlying economics of their operations.
Anthropic presents a different challenge.
Its current earnings are heavily influenced by the enormous expenses associated with building and operating advanced AI models.
The company must spend heavily on GPUs, data centers, model training, inference and highly skilled employees to sustain its expansion.
However, investors may expect many of these expenses to represent a smaller percentage of total revenue as Anthropic becomes larger.
If computing becomes more efficient and operating costs rise more slowly than revenue, the company’s profitability could improve significantly.
Anthropic Revenue Growth Accelerates Rapidly
Anthropic’s recent financial trajectory illustrates why investors are willing to consider forecasts extending several years into the future.
The company’s annualized revenue run rate reportedly stood at approximately $9 billion at the end of 2025 before climbing above $47 billion by May 2026.
Anthropic has also projected second-quarter 2026 revenue of at least $10.9 billion, more than twice the level recorded during the previous quarter.
The company has indicated that it could record its first quarterly operating profit, estimated at approximately $559 million.
Anthropic has also said that its revenue run rate increased by more than tenfold annually during each of the three years leading into early 2026.
That extraordinary growth rate is one of the central reasons investors may be willing to apply valuation multiples to the company’s expected 2028 revenue rather than relying primarily on today’s earnings.
Anthropic Valuation Depends on Future AI Economics
Ultimately, a potentially enormous Anthropic IPO valuation would depend on the belief that today’s extraordinary spending is building a business capable of producing substantially greater revenue and profitability in the future.
AI training and inference costs could decline as technology becomes more efficient, while staffing and other operating expenses may account for a smaller proportion of revenue as Anthropic expands.
If those assumptions prove correct, Anthropic could eventually generate significantly higher margins.
However, such a valuation also carries substantial uncertainty because investors must determine whether the economic benefits generated by artificial intelligence will ultimately justify the enormous capital being invested across the sector.
David Merkel, principal at Aleph Investments, suggested that Anthropic could theoretically reach a valuation as high as $2 trillion, while questioning whether such a valuation could be sustained over the longer term.
The central question for investors remains whether artificial intelligence will create enough additional productivity and economic value to support the extremely ambitious revenue and valuation expectations currently being placed on companies such as Anthropic.
