Anthropic is now set to go public in a trillion-dollar mega-IPO late next week, and there are now answers to most of the questions investors have been asking about the Claude developer. We now know how fast it's growing, how much it spends on computing power, and who will control the company after the IPO.
In the latest version of Anthropic's IPO prospectus, we also know the initial price range and valuation the company is targeting. With the IPO reportedly set to begin trading on Nov. 19, here's what I'm thinking as I analyze whether it's a smart buy.
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To put it mildly, Anthropic's growth is staggering. The AI giant's revenue grew 1,368% year over year in the second quarter, and the company brought in $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, more than three times its revenue for all of 2025. Its amended filing showed third-quarter revenue of $17.0 billion, more than it generated in the entire first half of the year.
Existing business customers are spending about nine times as much as they did a year ago, and more than 1,900 of them now spend at least $1 million a year.
It's also becoming a better business. A year ago, Anthropic spent about $2 on computing power for every dollar of revenue. In the first half of 2026, that fell to about $0.55, and the company's adjusted operating margin reached 15% in the third quarter. Add $131.8 billion of cash and short-term investments, and Anthropic has plenty of room to keep investing.
Of course, there's plenty to worry about. Anthropic's top five customers account for about a quarter of its revenue; the company has signed enormous long-term compute commitments, and public shareholders will have very little say in how it's run. The co-founders will control 50.1% of the voting power, and the company can issue additional shares to its Public Benefit Fund as the stock price rises.
Anthropic filed an updated prospectus on Tuesday, and it plans to sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, with a separate $26 billion private placement with several big tech companies. About 13.1 billion shares will be outstanding after the IPO, which works out to a market cap of about $916 billion to $1.02 trillion.
That's roughly in line with Anthropic's $965 billion valuation from its private funding round in May, and well below the $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion investors were pushing for just a few weeks ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.
It's worth noting that you may see higher valuation figures elsewhere, and they aren't wrong. When including stock options and other equity awards, Anthropic's valuation on a fully-diluted basis would be in the range of about $1.3 trillion to $1.4 trillion. The range may not hold, either. The Financial Times reports that strong demand has bankers considering pricing the shares above $78.
It is not uncommon for popular IPOs to price significantly above the initially disclosed range.
Anthropic generated $17.0 billion of revenue in the third quarter. Annualized, that's about $68 billion. On a fully diluted basis, investors are paying about 19-21 times sales.
To be sure, a company growing this quickly can grow into a lofty valuation faster than you'd think, and at about 20 times sales, Anthropic…
