Before public investors have seen a single page of its accounts, Anthropic is already being valued at more than $2 trillion (€1.73tn) in pre-IPO markets. That is more than double the $965 billion (€836bn) valuation the company agreed with private investors just a few months ago, and it reflects the extraordinary expectations building around the artificial intelligence sector.
The company behind the Claude chatbot has filed its IPO paperwork confidentially and chosen Nasdaq for its debut. What remains is the public release of its S-1 registration document, the official filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that will open the books to scrutiny. Until then, the only live price signal comes from a niche corner of the crypto market where pre-IPO speculation runs hot, and it currently sits far above anything the company has ever accepted from a traditional investor.
Anthropic's last agreed valuation was set in late May, when a $65 billion (€56bn) Series H round closed, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia. That figure was already remarkable for a company founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, coming just over a year after a valuation of $61.5 billion (€53.3bn). The jump represented a nearly sixteenfold increase in roughly twelve months.
Revenue has moved almost as fast. By the end of July, Anthropic's annualised revenue run rate had passed $65 billion (€56bn), driven by enterprise adoption of Claude. Losses are equally enormous, reportedly approaching $42 billion (€36.4bn) in 2025, reflecting the cost of training frontier models. Amazon has committed to investing up to $33 billion (€28.6bn) in the company, while Anthropic has pledged to spend more than $100 billion (€86.6bn) on AWS technologies over the coming decade.
Given these figures, investors are already aiming considerably higher than the last round's valuation. Reports put the target IPO valuation at $2 trillion (€1.73tn), with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley leading an offering expected to raise more than $60 billion (€52bn). That would make it the largest flotation in history, surpassing even the blockbuster listings of SpaceX and Cerebras Systems earlier this year.
A market that never sleeps
Perpetual futures contracts tracking Anthropic's pre-IPO valuation are trading on Hyperliquid, the largest decentralised derivatives venue. The implied market capitalisation there reached an all-time high of roughly $2.36 trillion (€2.05tn) and sits near $2.15 trillion (€1.86tn) at the time of writing, about 2.2 times the Series H valuation.
Heng Yu Lee, a partner at market maker DWF Labs, which is active in these instruments, rejects the suggestion that leverage rather than conviction is driving the premium. "Whether it's leveraged or not, everyone trading the pre-IPO market is genuine demand at the price that's reflected," he told Euronews, adding that "the premium is pricing in public information that's available, such as expected revenue numbers and expected market demand for the stock."
These contracts will also be the first instruments to react when the S-1 lands, trading around the clock while equity markets are shut. "At a moment like the S-1 dropping, you typically see volume spike and prices fluctuate heavily as the market digests the information," Lee explained.
However, the market remains small relative to what it is valuing. "Currently, the market isn't super deep, with just $6M in 24-hour volume and $31M in open interest on Hyperliquid," Lee said, adding that liquidity should improve as the listing approaches, given that more investors are likely to pile in. He is also candid about how much weight the number deserves. "As of now, I wouldn't rely too heavily on the absolute pricing as we have yet to have a public S-1," he stated, while clarifying that "the direction of how the prices move typically still accurately reflects the shifting sentiment towards the company as things develop."
A crowded year for AI listings
Once Anthropic files publicly, it will cement 2026 as the year of AI IPOs. It started with chipmaker Cerebras Systems, which designs wafer-scale processors pitched as an alternative to Nvidia's. The firm listed on Nasdaq in May after two false starts, raising $5.55 billion (€4.76bn) at $185 a share, above its revised price range. The stock opened 89% higher and closed its first day near $311, valuing the company at roughly $67 billion (€58bn) compared with the $23 billion (€20bn) it had been worth three months earlier. Investor appetite for a credible Nvidia challenger proved fierce, though the enthusiasm cooled quickly after a disappointing first earnings report. Cerebras is currently trading at a valuation of around $43.7 billion (€37.8bn).
Then came SpaceX, which listed in June, raising more than $85 billion (€73.6bn) at a valuation that briefly touched $2.8 trillion (€2.4tn) before falling back to around $1.95 trillion (€1.69tn). OpenAI was also slated to hold an IPO this year and had already filed confidentially, but has now stepped back entirely. The company has a private valuation of $852 billion (€738bn), set during a $122 billion (€105bn) round in March. CEO Sam Altman told Fortune on Saturday that listing this year would be "ill-advised", ruling out 2026 and declining to commit to 2027. He said the company had "a lot of stuff to do" on safety and alignment and that being private made that easier.
Altman's comments arrived the same day that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier", arguing that AI companies should deliberately slow the rate at which they improve their most capable models. Amodei proposed three steps: independent evaluators with employee-level access to frontier systems, coordination on safety standards among labs in democratic countries, and international agreements on the most dangerous categories of use. Anthropic has already committed unilaterally to the first, and the endorsements came quickly, with Sam Altman among those praising the proposal. The debate over AI safety is now as much a part of the IPO narrative as the financials, and European regulators are watching closely, particularly given the EU's AI Act and its emphasis on transparency and risk management.
