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Preparations for 'the largest IPO in history' underway, Anthropic reportedly projects 2028 revenue of $190-200 billion
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Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is preparing for a potential 'largest-ever' IPO. Unlike typical valuations based on recent financial data, Wall Street is this time directly using projected revenue for 2028 as the core evaluation basis. This rare practice has attracted market attention.
Two sources familiar with Anthropic's financial situation revealed that the company expects revenue in 2028 to reach approximately $190 billion to $200 billion, equivalent to about 1.28 trillion to 1.35 trillion RMB. Compared with the $47 billion annualized revenue run rate announced in May this year, this target is several times higher. This means investors need to make a major bet on rapid growth over the next two years.
Four sources said that bankers and investors are currently mainly calculating enterprise value/revenue multiples based on future projected revenue, and then assessing Anthropic's value accordingly. For high-growth software companies that have not yet formed stable profitability, using revenue multiples for valuation is not unusual, but directly using revenue projections two years out is relatively rare. This reflects both Anthropic's astonishing business expansion speed and the fact that the company is still heavily investing in AI infrastructure, making it difficult for the market to find a suitable valuation benchmark.
However, Anthropic's valuation challenge is equally significant. The company still needs to invest huge amounts of capital in computing power, model training, and personnel recruitment, with profit margins continuously squeezed. Investors are betting that as business scale expands, Anthropic's revenue growth will eventually outpace the cost growth needed to support expansion, thereby gradually improving profit margins. Mature companies are typically valued more on profit or EBITDA, but Anthropic's current EBITDA is insufficient to reflect the profitability level investors expect after it scales.
Anthropic's financial data already reflects the speed of change. The company's annualized revenue run rate at the end of 2025 was approximately $9 billion, and by May this year it had exceeded $47 billion. Anthropic expects second-quarter 2026 revenue to reach at least $10.9 billion, more than double the previous quarter, and is expected to achieve its first quarterly operating profit, projected at $559 million. Anthropic also stated that for the three consecutive years through early 2026, its annualized revenue run rate has grown by more than 10 times each year.
This growth speed is the key reason why investors are willing to extend the valuation basis all the way to 2028. Whether Anthropic can achieve this target as scheduled will become the core of the success or failure of this potential 'largest-ever' IPO. The market will wait and see.
