Anthropic IPO with $2 Trillion Valuation: Which Listed Stocks Benefit

AI company Anthropic aims for a valuation of $2 trillion for its planned initial public offering in October 2026, according to multiple media reports citing investor circles in early September 2026. Some investors are even internally calculating valuations of up to $3 trillion. According to reports, the marketing phase for the IPO is to begin in mid-October, with the prospectus potentially following later that month. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the banking consortium, supported by JPMorgan, Citi and Barclays. The offering volume is up to $100 billion in placed shares.

Valuation based on ambitious revenue forecasts

The targeted $2 trillion valuation stems from investor models, not from Anthropic itself. It is based on revenue forecasts for 2028 of $190 to $200 billion – some investors even calculate $200 to $300 billion. This would correspond to a valuation multiple of approximately 10 to 11 times the projected 2028 revenue.

In the second quarter of 2026, Anthropic achieved a projected revenue of $10.9 billion, according to reports. In July 2026, the annualized revenue rate – a projection based on current earnings, not booked annual revenue – had already reached $65 billion. For the full year 2026, analysts expect revenue of $100 to $120 billion.

Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management, stated on June 27, 2026 in the All-In Podcast: "I think Anthropic is worth $3 trillion today." Baker projected the company would end the year with "well over $100 billion" and achieve annualized revenue of $200 to $300 billion by 2028.

Margin profile as argument for high valuation

A key argument for the valuation is the expected profitability at scale. Research firm SemiAnalysis estimated on May 1, 2026 that Anthropic's gross margin on inference infrastructure – the process by which trained AI models process requests – had increased from 38 percent to over 70 percent, aided by declining costs per token generated. For the Opus 4.8 model, SemiAnalysis later estimated an inference gross margin of over 85 percent.

Baker argued that Anthropic, with increasingly inference-dominated operations and reported gross margins of up to 85 percent, could become "highly profitable." However, Daniela Amodei, President of Anthropic, described AI as a "very capital-intensive business" to Bloomberg in early June 2026. The company has committed over $130 billion in total capital for compute infrastructure: more than $100 billion over ten years to AWS, $30 billion to Microsoft Azure, and an agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of computing capacity.

Investment banks as direct beneficiaries

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan – banks that already dominate AI dealmaking – will benefit as consortium leaders from the fees of potentially the largest IPO in history. With an offering volume of $100 billion and industry-standard fee rates between 2 and 3.5 percent, the participating banks could collectively generate fees in the billions.

The last private valuation round (Series H) in May 2026 valued Anthropic at $965 billion. The planned IPO would more than double this valuation and surpass the SpaceX IPO from June 2026, which raised $75 billion at an initial valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion.

Semiconductor suppliers between opportunity and competition

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix participated in Anthropic's latest funding round and thus take on a dual role as competitors and investors. As direct investors, both companies benefit from a successful IPO. At the same time, they count among the largest listed beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure boom, as Anthropic's growing AI workload requires massive quantities of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and server memory.

However, according to a report from early September 2026, observers fear a shift in investment priorities: The Anthropic IPO could give investors their first direct opportunity to bet on the AI model business itself, rather than on component suppliers. This could redirect capital flows within the AI infrastructure investment ecosystem. Companies like Palantir (data analytics) and Nebius (cloud) traded in 2026 at roughly 55 times their revenue – evidence of the market's willingness to accept high valuations in the AI sector, although Anthropic's valuation multiples based on 2028 projections are considerably higher.

Valuation risks and sectoral impacts

Fortune noted on August 14, 2026 that Anthropic would need to generate Amazon-like profits to justify a $2 trillion valuation, despite the company having been barely profitable so far. Should the IPO disappoint, the greater risk according to sources would be a revaluation of AI valuations and spending overall, which could burden the entire semiconductor supply chain.

Venture capital firms and early-stage investors from Silicon Valley, particularly in Menlo Park on Sand Hill Road, who have held their positions through multiple funding rounds, count among the direct beneficiaries of a successful IPO. The broader question for listed technology stocks remains whether the IPO redirects capital to AI pure-plays or strengthens confidence in the entire AI value chain.