As Anthropic gets ready for what may turn out to be the largest IPO ever, investors on Wall Street are looking beyond just assigning a price to the AI firm. Instead, they’re focusing on its projected revenue for the next couple of years.
According to a couple of insiders, Anthropic anticipates sales between $190 billion and $200 billion by 2028, although this figure hasn’t been shared publicly before. This forecast is significantly higher than the $47 billion revenue “run rate” the company disclosed in May, which represents its current business momentum. It highlights the ambitious growth that investors are being asked to support.
People involved in the matter indicate that bankers and investors generally use valuation and earnings multiples based on forward-looking projections.
Using revenue multiples is a common practice for fast-growing software companies that haven’t yet reached a stable profit status.
However, looking two years down the line for evaluations is a bit less conventional, reflecting both Anthropic’s rapid growth and the complexities of establishing benchmarks for companies heavily investing in AI infrastructure.
The significant expenses associated with AI investments have contributed to declines in many popular tech stocks recently, including firms that investors often compare to Anthropic.
There have been examples of fast-growing companies that have gone public recently. Proponents of Cerebra Systems pointed to their 2028 revenue forecasts ahead of their IPO this year, and SpaceX had its projections pushed to 2029 before it launched publicly at a record valuation in June.
This method illustrates the challenges of valuing AI companies, where profits are often constrained by extensive spending on computing resources, training models, and recruitment. Investors are hopeful that as Anthropic expands, its revenue will outpace the costs tied to sustaining that growth, leading to greater profit margins down the line.
Anthropic has not yet responded to requests for comments.
In terms of comparable publicly traded companies, those being factored into Anthropic’s valuation ahead of its analyst day include Cloudflare, Palantir, and SpaceX, as per insiders.
These comparables are crucial for the IPO valuation process, offering investors a standard for assessing companies with similar growth trajectories and business frameworks. They can also help determine the revenue or earnings multiples to apply to financial forecasts.
For instance, Palantir is valued at 53 times its expected sales for this year, making it one of the priciest stocks on Wall Street. SpaceX and Cloudflare are trading at 41.6 times their estimated 2026 sales, based on data from LSEG.
Each of these firms provides different perspectives for evaluating Anthropic. Palantir serves as a reference for assessing businesses with rapid growth tied to AI, while Cloudflare compares to high-growth software and infrastructure sectors. SpaceX exemplifies a company valued partly on expectations for future expansion rather than its current financial situation.
Typically, established firms are evaluated based on their earnings (EBITDA), which gives insights into their economic viability.
However, in the case of Anthropic, current EBITDA doesn’t capture the expectations investors have for the company at scale. Anthropic’s heavy investments in GPUs, computing power, and hiring, while crucial for rapid growth, may take a smaller slice of revenue as the business expands.
The company’s financial path already indicates how swiftly this dynamic is shifting. Anthropic’s revenue run rate climbed from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to more than $47 billion in May. They expect second-quarter 2026 sales to hit at least $10.9 billion, more than doubling the preceding quarter, with first-quarter operating income projected at $559 million.
Remarkably, they mentioned their revenue run rate has increased over tenfold each year for three years through early 2026.
This growth trajectory is why investors are so focused on 2028 when assigning earnings multiples.
So, the valuation rests on the belief that Anthropic’s current expenditures are laying the groundwork for significantly higher revenues and profits in the long run. While technology is evolving, making training and inference potentially more cost-effective, larger companies might find labor and operational costs shrinking as a percentage of their revenue.
“Could they (Anthropic) achieve a $2 trillion valuation? It’s definitely possible, but I’m skeptical about its long-term sustainability,” said David Merkel, principal at Aleph Investments.
“Is AI truly going to boost productivity to that extent?… These are the kinds of questions that need consideration when pricing and thinking about investing in this.”
