Anthropic investors are reportedly betting the AI company – which is technically a startup, by the way – could achieve a valuation of $2 trillion (£1.49tn or £1,490,000,000,000) or more when it goes public, potentially setting the stage for another record-breaking stock market debut – only months after SpaceX set the current record.

The company behind the Claude family of AI models is preparing for a possible IPO in October, with backers expecting its rapid revenue growth to support a valuation more than double its current level.

Anthropic’s annualised revenue is expected to reach between $100bn and $120bn by the end of 2026, more than ten times its level at the beginning of the year.

According to the Financial Times, even applying a comparatively conservative valuation multiple of 30 times revenue to a company growing at around 800% a year would put Anthropic’s value close to $3tn.

With no directly comparable US-listed company, investors have instead looked towards businesses including Palantir and cloud company Nebius, which have traded at around 55 times revenue during 2026.

A $2tn valuation would also put Anthropic above the level achieved by SpaceX when Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company made its stock market debut in June.

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, giving it an initial valuation of $1.77tn and raising $75bn. Its valuation briefly climbed above $2tn after trading began before shares later moved back towards their IPO price.

For Anthropic’s investors, the SpaceX debut – despite huge question marks over valuation fulfilment – provides evidence that public markets are prepared to support exceptionally high valuations for companies considered leaders in rapidly developing sectors.

Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, filed confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June, placing the company in a quiet period that restricts what it can publicly disclose about its finances.

The company has increasingly focused on selling Claude to business customers and has gained momentum against competitors including OpenAI and Google.

Anthropic said in May that its annualised revenue had exceeded $47bn, while venture firms, sovereign wealth funds and other investors have put close to $100bn into the company during 2026. Its valuation also overtook OpenAI’s for the first time in May.

Despite the scale of investor expectations, Anthropic continues to face a number of challenges ahead of any potential listing.

Competition from Chinese AI developers is increasing, while the company is also dealing with regulatory pressures and an ongoing dispute with the US government.

The US Commerce Department briefly banned Anthropic’s top models in June, contributing to a slowdown in the company’s revenue growth during the month. Anthropic is also involved in litigation against the Department of Defense after it was designated a supply chain risk earlier this year.

The company was temporarily required to withdraw models including Fable 5 following export controls introduced in June, an episode which unsettled some customers.

Regardless, those blips and pressures appear to have done little to reduce enthusiasm among Anthropic’s backers.

Anthropic is not the only major privately-held technology company considering a stock market listing.

OpenAI filed confidential paperwork with the SEC a week after Anthropic and had been considering a public debut as early as this autumn, potentially at a valuation of more than $1tn.

More recently, however, the company has reportedly moved towards delaying a listing until 2027 rather than accepting a valuation below the paltry trillion-dollar level.

Anthropic Asks Public to Put AI’s ‘Hard Questions’ Forward

Alongside preparations for a potential IPO, Anthropic has launched a new initiative aimed at understanding public hopes and concerns about the development of AI.

Introducing the initiative, the company posed a series of questions including: “Who decides the rules for AI?”, “Can AI give my children a better future?”, “Does AI make the world a more dangerous place?” and “Can AI help scientists cure diseases?”

Anthropic said people remain divided between optimism about AI’s potential and concerns about its wider impact.

It pointed to potential benefits including reducing the amount of labour involved in people’s work and lives, changing approaches to learning, accelerating scientific and technological progress and helping to address medical and societal problems.

At the same time, the company acknowledged concerns around potential job losses, the impact on creative work and questions surrounding human agency, including whether greater use of AI could affect people’s ability to think independently, form human connections and find meaning in their lives.

Concerns also remain around the potential misuse of increasingly capable AI systems.

Anthropic operates as a Public Benefit Corporation, with a stated mission to secure the benefits of advanced AI models while mitigating their risks.

The company said that mission has led it to invest in safeguards intended to reduce misuse, research into the behaviour and inner workings of AI models, free access to AI models for scientists and a fellowship programme pairing early-career Claude users with nonprofit organisations.

Anthropic has also been gathering public views through a series of research projects. The first round of its Anthropic Public Record survey asked 52,000 Americans about their biggest hopes and concerns surrounding AI, while the company has surveyed 81,000 Claude users across 159 countries and 70 languages.

Anthropic is now inviting people to submit questions about areas including the impact of AI on employment, families and wider society, as well as its potential applications in science and medicine.

“In return, we’ll publicly track and report the specific actions we’re taking to address those questions—and we’ll be clear about the ways in which we might fall short of our stated goals,” the company said.