If the numbers now circulating around Anthropic’s planned public offering are accurate, it won’t just be one of the largest AI listings in history — it could be the largest IPO ever recorded, full stop.
What Bloomberg Reported
Bloomberg reported on August 20 that Anthropic executives expect their IPO to match or exceed the size of SpaceX’s record-setting first share sale — a bar that stood at $75 billion at pricing and climbed to $86.2 billion once the overallotment option was exercised. The company is reportedly running numbers as it prepares to potentially file its public S-1 registration with the SEC as soon as the end of August, though discussions remain fluid. CFO Krishna Rao has sidestepped the question of valuation in recent investor briefings, and some backers are already pushing a $2 trillion figure — though no official target has been endorsed.
The Revenue Behind the Ambition
The financial trajectory Anthropic is leaning on is striking. Its annualized revenue run rate reportedly reached $65 billion by the end of July 2026, up from around $10 billion across all of 2025 — a roughly 600% increase in seven months. Second-quarter revenue came in at more than $11.5 billion, compared to $787 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Enterprise demand for Claude, particularly for coding agents and AI automation workflows, has been the primary engine: Anthropic overtook OpenAI as the world’s most valuable private company in May after closing a $65 billion Series H round that valued the company at $965 billion.
The Loss Figure That Will Dominate the S-1
None of that revenue growth changes the fact that Anthropic posted a net loss of approximately $42 billion in 2025 — up roughly fivefold from the prior year’s $8.3 billion loss — driven almost entirely by computing costs. Two specific contracts illustrate the scale of those costs: Anthropic has committed $100 billion to Amazon cloud services over ten years, and reportedly pays SpaceX approximately $1.25 billion per month for compute capacity through 2029. When Anthropic files publicly, those figures will appear in audited disclosures for the first time, alongside the full cost structure, share count, and governance terms that have been invisible to outside observers while the company remained private.
Supervoting Shares and the Race Against OpenAI
Anthropic is planning to issue supervoting shares, keeping control with CEO Dario Amodei and other co-founders even after the public offering — the same structure SpaceX used and a common choice for founders unwilling to cede governance to public shareholders. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are working on the offering, with additional banks potentially joining the roster. Notably, Anthropic’s CFO told investors there is no concern about OpenAI listing first, since OpenAI has now explicitly deferred its own IPO to 2027 — see our coverage of that timeline. Anthropic is widely expected to list ahead of its rival.
Why the Stakes Are This High
The IPO market context matters. US IPOs had raised $160.6 billion through August 19, already approaching the $195.2 billion record set in 2021. An Anthropic offering that clears SpaceX’s record could push 2026 to the highest annual US IPO volume in history almost on its own — a real-world test of how public investors, rather than venture backers, price AI companies whose revenue is doubling by the quarter but whose losses are doing the same. For years, frontier AI economics have been evaluated behind closed doors; the Anthropic S-1 will open them.
What to Watch Next
The most consequential moment will be the public S-1 filing itself, which will replace estimates and leaks with audited figures and legal disclosures — putting valuation debates on a factual footing for the first time. If the company files by month-end as reported, a roadshow could begin in September and pricing could follow shortly after.
Sources: Bloomberg via Japan Times, TechStartups, Benzinga
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