The IPO prospectus of Anthropic is filled with details that excite yet also worry investors.
Bulls are cheering for the company's 1300% annual sales growth, 900% net revenue retention rate, and an implied gross margin of 85%. However, bears are focused on the approximately $80 billion in half-year net losses, commitments for computing power worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and over 90 pages of risk factors.
No matter which side one takes, these numbers are quite astonishing and give Anthropic the potential to launch what could become the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. At the same time, this IPO has also pushed investors into an unprecedented territory: they are required to value this first pure AI concept company amidst rising interest rates and growing market concerns regarding the large-scale construction of AI.
In May, its valuation was $965 billion. It is reported that the company is seeking a valuation of $1.5 to $2 trillion for IPO, which would immediately place it among the top 10 most valuable tech companies in the United States.
"This is an epoch-making moment. In ten years, when we look back, we will realize that this represents an unprecedented shift in technological paradigms that will shape our lives," said Janus Henderson Investors, Portfolio Manager of Denny Fish, on Monday during the program The Exchange on CNBC. "The key lies in the details, and we currently do not have a full understanding of all those details."
Anthropic was established in 2021 by a group of researchers who left OpenAI. Its most well-known product is the Claude AI model, as well as services sold through corporate contracts and subscriptions.
In the much-anticipated prospectus released on Monday, Anthropic stated that its corporate customer base includes: over 11,900 customers who spent at least $100,000 in the past year; over 1,900 customers who spent $1 million or more; and approximately 250 customers who spent $10 million or more. In the first nine months of 2026, five customers contributed about a quarter of the company's revenue.
Redpoint Ventures Managing Partner Erica Brescia On Monday, CNBC said in The Exchange: "I think it’s easy for people to overlook the fact that this is still in its very early stages, and it’s incredible that a company like Anthropic is performing so outstandingly at such an early stage of its journey."
She said, “Anthropic still holds great opportunities in the future.” The fund where Brescia is located is an investor of Anthropic. She also stated, “I think this is a very exciting opportunity for retail investors; they can get a share of this transformation, rather than just buying chip stocks.”
But for many investors who focus on fundamentals, Anthropic is not easy to sell.
The company incurred a loss of $80.7 billion in the first six months of this year, compared to a loss of $12.9 billion during the same period in 2025; however, most of this loss came from changes in the fair value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities. At the same time, as competition intensifies due to the use of low-cost open-source weight models, the company's computing power commitments are also soaring.
The CEO of financial research firm New Constructs, David Trainer, described the upcoming issuance as “a huge scam on Wall Street.”
Trainer is known on Wall Street for his bearish views. His company released a report last month stating that Anthropic is “the most absurd IPO of 2026,” calling it an “unprecedented test” of investors’ naivety.
After reviewing the prospectus, Trainer stated in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that his stance had not changed. He said that AI would be "an excellent tool for society," but not necessarily so for businesses; he expressed concerns about Anthropic's competitive position, its "not transparent" insider selling arrangements, and the fact that its commitments and liabilities far exceed its cash reserves.
“These people all hold shares in Anthropic, and they all want to cash out,” said Trainer. “I’ve experienced the internet bubble, I’ve been through the global financial crisis, and I was also on Wall Street during those times; I’ve seen how things work. For me, this is like a train accident that is slowly approaching.”
Roger McNamee, who invested early in Google and Facebook, said on Tuesday that Anthropic's IPO is "a very dangerous thing" for investors, and added that there is still much in this industry that needs to be proven.
"We should regard this S-1 as a sort of speculative novel, because it’s a great story, really great, but it has hundreds of pages, and those hundreds of pages are not there to clarify the story," said McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners, in the program Squawk on the Street. "And based on the feedback I receive on X, many people who disagree with me are saying, ‘I like this story,’ to which I reply, ‘Well, may God bless you, that’s your money.’"
The public declaration of Anthropic has brought it one step closer to IPO, but there are still some obstacles that need to be overcome before it can truly stand on the starting line.
During the roadshow process, the company must also seek potential investors, assess their needs, determine the issue price, and allocate shares. Only after all these steps are completed will it eventually list on NASDAQ under the stock code “ANT”.
Investors will closely monitor every development and detail.
D.A. Davidson General Manager Gil Luria stated that before the company went public, he wanted to learn more information, including the long-term profit trajectory, especially the valuation. In an interview on Tuesday, he said that if IPO is priced reasonably, the performance is likely to be "very good."
"We can discuss the risks, but based on what we know at this moment and the situation we're in right now, Anthropic is still the main AI company, and it's a pure underlying asset," said Luria. "So this IPO should perform well, because investors will want to access pure underlying assets."
View: The valuation of IPO of Anthropic by Tenacity may be close to $2 trillion.
