How aggressive is the valuation of Anthropic's IPO? Wall Street bets revenue will soar to $200 billion by 2028

Anthropic is preparing for an IPO, and its valuation method is challenging traditional frameworks—Wall Street is now looking two years ahead, using the company’s projected 2028 revenue as the anchor for pricing.

According to reports citing two informed sources, Anthropic internally expects revenue in 2028 to reach approximately $190 billion to $200 billion, far exceeding the $47 billion annualized revenue run rate disclosed in May of this year. Another four sources revealed that bankers and investors are valuing Anthropic using forward enterprise value/revenue multiples.

For high-growth software companies, valuing based on future revenues is not new, but directly using revenue two years out as the core pricing benchmark is still relatively rare. This approach reflects not only Anthropic’s astonishing business expansion speed, but also highlights how challenging it is to find a reasonable valuation reference for this company amid continued surging investment in AI infrastructure.

In other words, investors are not betting on how much Anthropic can earn now, but whether it can quickly scale up its revenue in the next two years and ultimately achieve economies of scale.

Revenue Soars, Profitability Still on the Horizon

Anthropic’s financial trajectory has demonstrated an extremely steep growth curve.

According to company disclosures, its annualized revenue run rate was about $9 billion at the end of 2025 and had risen to over $47 billion by this May. The company expects revenue to reach at least $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling from the previous quarter, and is likely to achieve its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million.

Anthropic also stated that, for the three years through early 2026, its annualized revenue run rate has increased more than 10-fold each year.

However, behind this rapid expansion, the company still has to bear huge costs for computing power and R&D. Currently, continuous input is required for GPU and other computing power, model training, inference, as well as talent recruitment, which means EBITDA for the period is still unable to fully reflect future profitability.

The valuation logic in the market is that as revenue scale increases, the proportion of infrastructure and personnel costs is expected to drop, while efficiency in training and inference keeps improving, ultimately driving profit margins higher. In other words, Anthropic is leveraging today’s high investment for greater future revenue scale and profit potential.

Palantir, Cloudflare, and SpaceX Serve as Valuation References

Prior to Anthropic’s analyst day, the market was also looking for suitable comparable companies.

According to reports citing insiders, cloud infrastructure company Cloudflare, enterprise software company Palantir, and SpaceX were all included as valuation benchmarks.

According to LSEG data, Palantir currently trades at about 53 times this year’s expected revenue, making it one of the highest valued stocks on Wall Street; SpaceX and Cloudflare both trade at around 41.6 times their projected 2026 revenues.

The three companies provide different valuation benchmarks: Palantir represents high-growth software firms with AI exposure; Cloudflare represents high-growth software and infrastructure enterprises; SpaceX provides a precedent for valuing a company more on future growth expectations than on current financial performance.

Similar cases have occurred before. Insiders said that Cerebras Systems’ backers cited 2028 revenue projections before its IPO this year; prior to SpaceX’s record-breaking valuation in June, its related projections even extended to 2029.

A $2 Trillion Valuation: What Is the Market Really Betting On?

As Anthropic’s valuation continues to climb, debate over its valuation ceiling is intensifying in the market.

David Merkel, head of investment company Aleph Investments, said it is “possible” for Anthropic to reach a $2 trillion valuation, but the key question is whether that valuation is sustainable. He believes investors must answer a core question: just how much additional productivity can AI deliver.

This may become the most important valuation test for Anthropic after it goes public.

Currently, AI capital expenditure remains high, and the market is already reassessing whether massive infrastructure spending can ultimately be converted into sustained and scalable profitability. For Anthropic, the critical task over the next two years is not only pushing revenue toward $200 billion, but also proving that this wave of revenue growth can eventually transform into profit and cash flow.

If this logic holds, the lofty valuation based on 2028 revenue might be absorbed by the market; conversely, if revenue growth slows, or if AI infrastructure spending fails to yield an improvement in profit margins, this “forward revenue valuation” framework could quickly come under pressure.