Business Insider Exclusive ReportClaude developer Anthropic has chosen Nasdaq as the exchange for its IPO, aiming to list in October, with an estimated valuation of up to $2 trillion (about NT$62.4 trillion). If it goes ahead, it will be one of the largest IPOs in history, and Nasdaq will score another win after landing SpaceX earlier this year. The timing is intriguing: the day before the news became public, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had just published a long article calling for the entire AI industry to slow down.
How far is a $2 trillion valuation from reality?
On May 28 this year, Anthropic completed a US$65 billion (about NT$2.03 trillion) Series H funding round at a post-money valuation of US$965 billion (about NT$29.7 trillion), led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. The company said at the time that its annualized revenue had surpassed US$47 billion (about NT$1.47 trillion). TechStock² calculated that this valuation equates to about 20.5 times revenue; if the IPO valuation does reach US$2 trillion, the multiple would rise to about 42.6 times, 107% higher than the original market benchmark in May.
Currently, Anthropic plans to raise up to $100 billion in an IPO (about NT$3.12 trillion), with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citi participating as underwriters. Nvidia is in talks to become an anchor investor and may invest up to $10 billion (about NT$312 billion). The company is also finalizing a $15 billion (about NT$468 billion) revolving credit facility led by Morgan Stanley and eight other banks, six times the size of last year’s loan.
On the revenue side, based on current performance, Anthropic’s annualized revenue will exceed $65 billion (about NT$2.03 trillion), more than 7 times higher than its growth rate at the end of 2025. As of the end of July, the company’s annualized revenue run rate had surpassed $65 billion, whereas at the end of 2025 it was only about $9 billion (about NT$280.8 billion).
IPO and safety warning collide
The timing of this IPO is especially delicate. On September 12, the day before the Nasdaq news became public, Amodei published〈We Must Pace the Frontier〉A piece argues that AI labs should slow the pace of model capability improvements so that safety work can catch up. He singled out recursive self-improvement and an incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face (A group of agents carried out cyberattacks beyond the scope of their mission.), as evidence that progress at the frontier is too rapid.
On the same day, Sam Altman and Elon Musk also said that the pace of AI development should be slowed. Altman told Fortune that OpenAI will not go public in 2026, and that given AI safety concerns, “now is not a wise time to go public.” This makes Anthropic’s situation even more awkward: OpenAI is using safety as a reason to wait, while Anthropic is heading to the public market.
The controversy over AI risk had already flared up once in early September. On September 9, the day he left Anthropic, safety researcher Jacob Coxon warned colleagues via Slack that without more caution and cooperation,Superintelligent AI will bring “the risk of causing human extinction.”An Anthropic researcher said that within ten years, AIThe probability of “killing all of humanity” exceeds 10%.bringing more attention to this risk. Value investor Michael Burry, meanwhile, criticized OpenAI and Anthropic executives for calling for slowing down AI development as “self-serving,” and bluntly said, “IPOs need hype and touting.”
What should we watch next?
Currently, Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 1. It could begin IPO marketing as early as mid-October, with the public prospectus expected to appear by the end of September. The company must disclose financial data at least 15 days before starting its investor roadshow. This IPO is expected to be completed before the U.S. midterm elections in November.
Traders have already begun guessing stock tickers, with ANTH and CLDE circulating online; neither is an official ticker. Before Anthropic officially files publicly and listing details are finalized, any platform claiming to trade Anthropic common stock is not Anthropic itself. In the secondary market, investors trading Anthropic shares are already betting on a valuation approaching $2 trillion, based on a $47 billion revenue run rate, more than 1,000 enterprise customers spending over $1 million annually, and a $9.1 billion (about NT$283.9 billion) power agreement with bitcoin miner Riot Platforms.
If Anthropic actually lists at a valuation close to $2 trillion, it will be the first company with AI safety as its core positioning to enter the public markets at this scale. The $2 trillion is currently a target price, not a transaction price. Until the prospectus answers questions about revenue structure, losses, customer concentration, and dilution, public-market investors can do nothing but wait for the documents.
Source: KOCPC Chinese