Anthropic Wants $2 Trillion, One Analyst Says It Could Be Worth $144B

Anthropic’s planned $2 trillion IPO is the most ridiculous public offering of 2026, and investors should avoid it, according to an October 6 report from independent research firm New Constructs.

Key Takeaways

• Anthropic posted an $8 billion operating loss in 2025 on about $4.6 billion in revenue, based on leaked financials cited in the report.
• The company holds $518 billion in cloud, compute and infrastructure commitments, with 80% non-cancelable, according to Reuters.
• Anthropic has raised $122 billion in private capital, about five times what Uber raised before its 2019 IPO.
• To justify a $2 trillion valuation, the firm’s model shows Anthropic would need $3.6 trillion in revenue and $358 billion in NOPAT by 2035.

Losses Outpace Revenue Growth

Anthropic grew revenue twelvefold from about $400 million in 2024 to about $4.6 billion in 2025 and according to reports, the company is on pace for $100 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026.

Asked whether that growth undercuts the view that open-source models are squeezing closed ones, David Trainer, founder and CEO of New Constructs, said revenue is not the measure that matters.

“Growth isn’t the issue. The biggest unanswered question remains: how does the company generate profits?” Trainer told fathom.news.

The company reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, including a $34 billion charge tied to convertible instrument revaluations. Excluding that charge, its operating loss widened from $3 billion in 2024 to $8 billion in 2025.

That loss is larger than what several recent tech IPOs reported in the year before listing. SpaceX lost $2.6 billion, Uber $3.0 billion, Rivian $1.0 billion and Airbnb $0.5 billion, while ARM Holdings earned $0.7 billion.

New Constructs said Anthropic is targeting a valuation 1.1 times larger than SpaceX’s and eight times the combined IPO valuations of Uber, Rivian, ARM and Airbnb.

Token Prices Fall

The LLM Token Expenditure Index, which tracks the going rate for a large language model token, fell from $2.04 in late May 2026 to $0.97 at the end of August, according to CNBC and Silicon Data. It stood at $0.96 on October 4.

“Given the already negative margins with high token prices, this dramatic decline suggests that both Anthropic and OpenAI will struggle to ever squeeze a penny of profit out of their AI revenue,” Trainer said.

He added that rival models offer similar results for less. “Competing models have largely replicated, or even outpaced, the performance of Anthropic’s models at a much lower cost,” he said.

A previous New Constructs report found Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 cost about 18 times more than DeepSeek R1 for input tokens and 23 times more for output tokens.

$518B In Commitments

The leaked S-1 shows $518 billion in planned cloud, compute and infrastructure obligations, according to the report. Reuters reported that 80% of those obligations are non-cancelable.

Nearly 25% of Anthropic’s 2025 revenue came from two undisclosed customers, according to Reuters. About 47% of revenue flows through Google and Amazon’s cloud platforms. Both companies are also Anthropic investors.

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Private Capital and Early Investors

Anthropic has raised $122 billion from private markets. Early investors bought in at valuations as low as $623 million, and a May 2026 round valued the company at $965 billion, making it the most valuable private company ever.

The New York Times reported the IPO is set to create at least seven co-founder billionaires.

Risk Disclosures

Anthropic reportedly devoted 80 of the 261 pages in its prospectus to risk factors and 48 pages to describing its business. The filing warns its AI may pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, according to the report.

The prospectus also lists scenarios in which its AI could resist shutdown, conceal or manipulate information, engage in conduct resembling blackmail, or outwit the company’s safety assessments.

The Federal Trade Commission recently opened an investigation into Anthropic and OpenAI over potential consumer harms.

Valuation Model

To justify a $2 trillion valuation, New Constructs’ reverse discounted cash flow model shows Anthropic would need a 10% NOPAT margin starting immediately, compared with a negative 175% operating margin in 2025. It would also need revenue growth of 1,000% in 2026, 100% in 2027 and 56% a year from 2028 to 2035.

That path implies $3.6 trillion in revenue by 2035, or 1.4 times the combined trailing revenue of Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta and Oracle. Implied NOPAT of $358 billion would be double NVIDIA’s $184 billion.

“Does Anthropic deserve a free pass into the same valuation club as tech giants with decades of proven cash flows when it has not proven it can earn a dollar?” Trainer asked.

With 36% annual growth from 2028 and a 20% margin, the model values Anthropic at $1.1 trillion, 43% below the target. That case still implies $1.2 trillion in revenue and $242 billion in NOPAT in 2035.

Asked how the firm arrived at its lowest estimate, Trainer pointed to a scenario with a 20% NOPAT margin, revenue growth of 1,000% in 2026 and 100% in 2027, and 20% annual growth from 2028 to 2035.

That values Anthropic’s equity at $144 billion, 93% below the target, and implies $447 billion in revenue and $89 billion in NOPAT in 2035. Meta generated $89 billion in NOPAT over the trailing twelve months.

Trainer did not say at what point the firm would revise the estimate.

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