Startups

Anthropic targets record IPO north of $100 billion, with AI backlash flagged as a key risk

The Claude maker is preparing to file publicly as soon as end of August at a valuation floated as high as $2 trillion — while its prospectus will warn investors that opposition to AI and data centers could throttle growth.

By Giulia Donatello · Startups & funding · 2026-08-22 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Aditya Vyas — New York Stock Exchange facade with American flags on Wall Street

Anthropic’s underwriters have been sounding out investors on raising more than $100 billion at a valuation as high as $2 trillion, according to reporting by The New York Times, an offering that would match or eclipse SpaceX’s record $75 billion debut ($86.2 billion after the overallotment) and roughly double the Claude maker’s current private mark.

The company confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC on June 1, and people familiar with the matter say the public filing could land as soon as the end of August. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase are leading the book, with room for additional banks.

The financials explain the appetite. Anthropic’s preliminary Q2 2026 revenue topped $11.5 billion, against $787 million in the same quarter a year earlier, and its annualized run rate hit $65 billion by the end of July. Q2 also delivered positive adjusted operating income. The losses are the other side of that ledger: a net loss of almost $42 billion in 2025, roughly five times the $8.3 billion booked in 2024, per documents seen by Bloomberg News.

Then there’s the risk section. CNBC reports the prospectus will name negative sentiment toward AI and data centers as a risk factor, an unusually candid concession given a May Gallup survey showing seven in 10 Americans opposed AI data center construction in their area, with close to half strongly opposed. Midterms are less than three months away.

Anthropic is also weighing super-voting shares that would hand CEO Dario Amodei, who holds about a 2% stake, and his co-founders outsized control post-listing. The Information reported the structure first. It’s the Silicon Valley template applied to a company whose entire public pitch rests on trustworthy governance of a technology the public increasingly distrusts.

The juxtaposition is the story. A potentially record-breaking listing, run by three of the most establishment banks on Wall Street, into a political environment where the physical infrastructure of the product is polling underwater. The S-1, when it drops in the coming weeks, will be the first time an AI lab has had to price that contradiction in front of public markets.

Sources