Anthropic moves closer to IPO: Reportedly aiming for a $2 trillion valuation before Thanksgiving, Investor Day scheduled for October 14th

New details about Anthropic's IPO plans have emerged.

According to sources cited by Bloomberg on Thursday, October 1, Eastern Time, Anthropic will hold a Pre-IPO Investor Day on October 14 with potential investors, having sent invitations to a group of institutional investors. Anthropic could begin the official IPO marketing as soon as the week of November 9, aiming to commence trading before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

Sources said that the Investor Day will be held at Anthropic's San Francisco headquarters, where invited institutional investors will have the opportunity to ask questions directly to company executives. This event is seen as a critical step for Anthropic to communicate with investors ahead of a potential public listing.

According to the current timeline, Anthropic is likely to complete its listing in November, though the specific IPO schedule may still change. U.S. Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year; if the roadshow officially launches the week of November 9, Anthropic may be able to complete the transaction before the holiday.

The scale may rival SpaceX, investors give close to $2 trillion valuation

The size of Anthropic’s IPO is one of the main highlights this time.

Bloomberg previously reported that Anthropic's expected IPO fundraising could match or even surpass SpaceX’s record-setting IPO. The latest reports show that some potential investors believe Anthropic's reasonable valuation could reach $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion.

This valuation would make Anthropic one of the world's largest AI companies by market cap, and serve as an important reference for capital markets to gauge the value of generative AI firms.

Meanwhile, rival OpenAI has recently chosen to pause its IPO. According to previous reports, OpenAI is seeking to raise at least $30 billion in new funding, targeting a valuation of about $1.4 trillion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company is not in a rush to go public at this time.

If Anthropic makes its market debut first, its offering price will provide an important benchmark for investors to reassess the valuation of the entire AI industry.

Enterprise customers drive the growth story

In the eyes of potential investors, a major selling point for Anthropic is the rapid adoption by enterprise customers.

According to Bloomberg, although Claude's consumer brand recognition still lags behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, its adoption rate among enterprise users such as software developers is relatively high, supporting the sustained revenue growth that investors value.

Diverse institutions, including banks, hedge funds, and enterprise software companies like Salesforce, have already partnered with Anthropic to integrate its AI tools into their own workflows.

This focus on the enterprise market also constitutes a key difference between Anthropic and OpenAI. For AI companies preparing to go public, the ongoing usage and commercial revenue brought by enterprise clients is a critical metric for investors assessing the sustainability of growth.

Revenue surges over tenfold, but compute power investment results in huge losses

Anthropic’s sky-high valuation is predicated on rapidly growing AI demand, but the company remains in a phase of large-scale investment.

Documents previously obtained by the media show Anthropic’s full-year revenue for 2025 is about $4.6 billion, far above the $386 million for 2024; but during the same period, net loss is close to $42 billion, about five times that of the previous year.

It is important to note that this enormous net loss does not entirely represent the company's operating losses. The documents show that more than $34 billion stems from accounting items such as fair value changes in the company’s liabilities; after excluding these factors, Anthropic’s 2025 operating loss still exceeds $8 billion.

At the same time, Anthropic is massively expanding its AI infrastructure. The company recently signed a $11.6 billion, seven-year computing resources agreement with Akamai, further enlarging its future compute investments.

This also means that Anthropic must prove to the public market not only its rapid AI business growth, but also how it will turn revenue into more stable cash flow and profitability in the future, even as compute and infrastructure investments continue to rise.

OpenAI catching up, and AI safety controversies intensify

Anthropic’s rapid rise in recent times also faces a shifting competitive landscape.

Media reports indicate that OpenAI’s sales momentum has strengthened in recent months, increasing competitive pressure on Anthropic. Both companies are at the center of AI safety debates, with a series of high-profile AI agent hacking incidents recently drawing public attention to the risks of cutting-edge models.

In September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also published an article on his personal website advocating for slowing the advancement of frontier AI model capabilities.

However, these factors have not significantly changed the valuation expectations of some potential investors for Anthropic at this stage, with some still believing the company could be worth $1.8-$2 trillion.

AI superstar goes public as the U.S. IPO market is under pressure

As Anthropic speeds toward a listing, the overall U.S. IPO market is not particularly hot.

Bloomberg data shows that excluding record-breaking large IPOs such as SpaceX and SK Hynix, more than 100 newly listed U.S. stocks this year have an average weighted return of about -4%, significantly trailing the S&P 500’s approximately 12% gain and the Nasdaq 100’s roughly 20% rise over the same period.

Recently, the U.S. IPO market has seen a number of delayed listings, with some companies even halting their offerings at the last minute. Against this backdrop, if Anthropic ultimately completes its mega-IPO, it will be one of the most closely watched deals in the U.S. new stock market this year.

Whether its listing price gains public market recognition will also serve as a key window into whether the high valuations of AI superstars can be transferred from the private to the public markets.