Markets AUG 21, 2026

Anthropic eyes end-of-month IPO filing that could top SpaceX's $86B record

The Claude maker's Q2 revenue hit $11.5B, a 14x jump, as annualized run-rate cleared $65B and investors float a $2 trillion valuation.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

Anthropic PBC expects to file its IPO registration publicly with the SEC as soon as the end of August, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg, in a listing its bankers believe could match or surpass the $86.2 billion SpaceX raised after overallotment last year, the largest first-time share sale on record. The pricing target sits near SpaceX’s $75 billion book, and backers have begun underwriting a prospective valuation around $2 trillion.

The financials underneath the pitch are, by any historical measure, unusual. Q2 2026 preliminary revenue exceeded $11.5 billion, up from $787 million in Q2 2025, a 14-fold jump. Annualized run-rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, up from $47 billion in May and roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025. Investors briefed by the Financial Times expect a 2026 exit run-rate between $100 billion and $120 billion. Anthropic also booked its first quarter of positive adjusted operating income.

The losses scale in step. Net loss ran to roughly $42 billion in 2025, about five times the $8.3 billion posted in 2024. A pre-IPO revolving credit facility, oversubscribed by banks, is set to climb above its $10 billion target. A compute arrangement with SpaceX worth tens of billions over three years explains much of the burn.

The syndicate is filling out to match. Citigroup is joining Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase on the top line. May’s Series H raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, meaning bankers are now marking the equity up roughly twofold in a single quarter.

CEO Dario Amodei’s company is threading a specific window. OpenAI, running at a $40 billion annualized clip, has pushed its own listing to 2027. CFO Krishna Rao’s investor briefings have reportedly skirted the valuation question entirely, which is itself a tell: at these numbers, the frame the market accepts on day one becomes the frame everyone else’s AI listing gets compared against for years.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.