Anthropic's Investors Want a $2 Trillion IPO. The Last Record-Setting IPO Has Made Its Buyers Nothing in Two Months.

Anthropic's investors are aiming for a record that would make the AI developer the most valuable public debut in history: a listing at $2 trillion or more. The Financial Times reported this month that the company's backers are discussing an October IPO at that valuation. Anthropic itself has not confirmed the number. The company filed a confidential draft registration statement on June 1, and it has not publicly named a target valuation, date, exchange, or ticker. Bloomberg reported Thursday that Anthropic expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record raise, and could file publicly as soon as the end of this month.

A $2 trillion debut would be the largest initial public offering ever. The company it would take the record from is SpaceX, which priced in June at a valuation of about $1.77 trillion. That makes SpaceX a timely case study for anyone weighing whether to chase the next record listing.

Image source: Getty Images.

Ten weeks after listing, SpaceX's public-market investors are essentially back where they started. The company sold 555,555,555 shares at $135 apiece on June 11, raising $75 billion at the offer and about $86 billion in all after underwriters bought 83.3 million additional shares. The stock opened at $150, ran to $225.64, and then fell to $104.83 before settling near $135. Offer-price buyers are flat; opening-trade buyers are down about 9 percent.

The flat return is not because the business stalled. SpaceX grew second-quarter revenue 92 percent year over year to $7.81 billion. Its AI segment generated $2.6 billion, more than triple the prior-year figure. The company signed $14.1 billion in cloud contracts during the quarter, narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion, and ended June with $47.5 billion in backlog.

Growth like that usually moves a stock. Across the full 10 weeks, on net, it has not moved this one. The offer price had already charged for the growth. SpaceX trades at about 57 times the annualized second-quarter revenue. The sellers set a record price precisely because the growth story was at full strength; the buyers have spent two months waiting for the story to catch up to what they paid.

Anthropic could produce a different outcome. Its backers point to explosive growth: preliminary second-quarter revenue was above $11.5 billion, more than double the first quarter's $4.73 billion, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. Investors who spoke to the Financial Times expect annualized revenue of $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year. Days before filing, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. The $2 trillion figure under discussion is roughly double that price.

Worth noting: Anthropic's own senior executives have not fixed a valuation target, even privately, according to the same reporting. The $2 trillion figure belongs to the investors, not the company.

If revenue lands where the backers project, a $2 trillion valuation would be about 18 times the annualized revenue they expect by December. That is a lower price against hoped-for sales than SpaceX commanded. But it still assumes annualized revenue grows another 50 percent or more from the $65 billion run rate the company reported for late July, and it prices in that assumption before Anthropic has reported a single quarter in public.

Two months does not settle the case for the next two years. A business that keeps doubling can eventually outgrow any starting price. But the two-month record is worth taking at face value. The largest IPO ever delivered a 67 percent surge, a 53 percent collapse from the peak, and no gain for the investor who simply bought and held from the offering — all while the company nearly doubled revenue year over year. A record-setting price means the growth is charged upfront. So far, that is exactly how the market has treated it.

Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Space Exploration Technologies wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $429,223!*

Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,318,055!*

That performance is why people listen. With a track record of beating the S&P 500 by nearly 5x, Stock Advisor offers a distinct advantage. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built for the long haul.

See the 10 stocks »

Stock Advisor returns as of August 22, 2026.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.