Anthropic IPO: Can $16.3B Revenue Justify a $2 Trillion Valuation?

A San Francisco artificial intelligence startup that reported an $80.7 billion loss in the first half of this year is preparing to ask public market investors for $2 trillion. Anthropic’s planned initial public offering, which could happen as soon as next month according to Bloomberg, will test whether Wall Street is willing to underwrite the most expensive infrastructure buildout in corporate history based on revenue growth alone.

The math behind the offering is brutal. To justify a $2 trillion valuation at standard technology multiples, Anthropic would need to generate between $59 billion and $79 billion in annual profit. It currently generates none. The company disclosed in its S-1 filing, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that it burned through $9 billion on compute infrastructure in just the first six months of 2026. That figure exceeds the $7.3 billion it spent on computing power during all of 2025.

Revenue is scaling fast enough to keep early backers engaged. Anthropic pulled in $16.3 billion during the first half of the year, up from $1.1 billion over the same period a year earlier, according to the Journal. But the cost structure required to produce those sales has locked the company into long-term liabilities rarely seen outside sovereign debt markets. Anthropic has signed $450 billion in mostly “noncancellable” cloud computing contracts spanning the next decade.

Those contracts expose a structural vulnerability outlined directly in the S-1. Anthropic requires more computing capacity than Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google—its primary cloud partners—can currently provide. The company is effectively racing against the physical limits of data center construction while contractually obligated to pay for capacity that does not yet exist.

The $80.7 billion net loss reported for the first half of 2026 requires parsing. According to the Journal’s review of the filing, $72 billion of that deficit stemmed from an accounting charge tied to the rising value of the company’s convertible debt and financing instruments. As Anthropic’s private valuation climbed, the cost of carrying those financial obligations on the balance sheet surged. The company was valued at $965 billion following a May 28 funding round, up from $461 million during its 2021 Series A, according to PitchBook data.

That 2021 funding round delivered extraordinary returns to a small group of early investors. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt participated in the $124 million Series A with an investment in the tens of millions, sources told Bloomberg. Schmidt acquired his stake through personal connections; he had met co-founder Dario Amodei in 2018 after being introduced by Cami Clark, whom he dated starting in 2011 and who later married Amodei, according to the Wall Street Journal. Schmidt now holds a 1% stake that Bloomberg reports could be worth up to $20 billion if the IPO hits its target valuation.

Some early backers expect the market to push the price even higher. An early Anthropic investor told Fortune’s Shawn Tully that shares could trade at a $2.4 trillion market capitalization post-IPO. That would surpass the $2.1 trillion market cap SpaceX achieved at the close of its first trading day in June.

Anthropic did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. A spokesperson for Schmidt declined to comment on the record.