Media: Anthropic anticipates revenue of up to $200 billion by 2028 ahead of IPO

Anthropic forecasts revenue of around $190 billion to $200 billion by 2028.
The potential valuation of the company for its IPO will be based on this figure rather than current results.
Investors are using the enterprise value-to-revenue multiple.

Anthropic expects its revenue to reach approximately $190 billion to $200 billion by 2028, and investors are already using these figures to evaluate the company ahead of a potential public offering. This was reported by Reuters, citing four individuals familiar with the finances and IPO preparations of Anthropic.

This forecast significantly exceeds the annual revenue run rate of $47 billion disclosed by the company in May. Thus, Anthropic's future valuation will largely depend not on current financial results but on the company's ability to achieve substantial growth over the next two years.

Previously, Anthropic had already submitted a confidential filing to the SEC for an IPO, marking the first formal step toward going public. However, the timing and terms of the offering remain contingent on market conditions and regulatory approval.

Anthropic will be valued based on future revenue

According to sources, bankers and potential investors are using the enterprise value-to-revenue (EV/Revenue) multiple to assess Anthropic, applying projected financial metrics.

This approach is common among rapidly growing tech companies that do not yet have stable profitability. However, projecting two years ahead for an IPO is less typical.

The reason is the scale and speed of Anthropic's business development, as well as the enormous costs associated with building AI infrastructure. The company is spending significant amounts on:

• GPUs and other computing power;
• training and operating AI models;
• inference;
• hiring personnel;
• expanding infrastructure.

Investors are essentially betting that as Anthropic grows, its revenue will increase faster than its costs, and that operating margins will gradually expand.

The company's dynamics already demonstrate the scale of this growth. By the end of 2025, Anthropic's annual revenue run rate was around $9 billion, and by May 2026, it exceeded $47 billion. The company also projected at least $10.9 billion in revenue for Q2 2026—more than double the previous quarter—and expected its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million.

According to the company, its annual revenue run rate has grown more than tenfold each year for three years leading up to the beginning of 2026.

This dynamic explains why potential investors are willing to evaluate Anthropic based on financial metrics that the company may only achieve in 2028.

Palantir, Cloudflare, and SpaceX serve as benchmarks

During the preparation for Anthropic's analyst day, investors are also comparing the company to public businesses with similar growth characteristics or significant ties to AI.

Among these benchmarks, sources mention:

• Palantir—valued at approximately 53 times its expected annual revenue for 2026;
• Cloudflare—around 41.6 times its projected annual revenue;
• SpaceX—also about 41.6 times its projected revenue for 2026.

Each of these companies provides investors with different benchmarks for evaluating Anthropic. Palantir is viewed as an example of a rapidly growing business with significant exposure to AI. Cloudflare serves as a benchmark for a tech company that combines software and infrastructure, while SpaceX demonstrates a valuation model largely based on the future scale of the business.

This approach has already been used before the IPOs of other rapidly growing companies. In particular, investors in Cerebras Systems considered the projected revenue for 2028 ahead of its public offering in 2026. In the case of SpaceX, projections extended to 2029 even before the company's record IPO in June.

In this context, Anthropic's valuation will depend on whether the developer of Claude can convert substantial investments in computing infrastructure and model development into sustainable revenue growth.