#Gate直通IPO第三期Anthropic Anthropic, valued at $1.4 trillion, is going public. Is the biggest IPO in history worth that price?

At the top of the IPO price range, buyers would be paying 543 times quarterly annualized revenue. Anthropic has launched its IPO roadshow, planning to issue 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each. The IPO and private placement could raise up to $90.4 billion, giving the company a fully diluted valuation of $1.4 trillion — if completed, it would surpass SpaceX to become the largest public listing in history.
On November 10, Anthropic officially launched its IPO roadshow. Its registration filing disclosed a price range of $70 to $78 per share, with 825 million shares to be issued.

The IPO and private placement combined could raise up to $90.4 billion, with a maximum fully diluted valuation of $1.4 trillion. Pricing will be finalized on November 18. To understand the scale of $90.4 billion, consider this: the previous largest IPO in the world was Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion offering. Anthropic's raise alone is three and a half times that record.

An AI company is rewriting the history books right out of the gate. Where is the $90.4 billion coming from?
This money isn't being cobbled together by retail investors; the bulk of it was lined up long ago. According to information cross-checked across multiple media outlets, including 21st Century Business Herald and Bloomberg, NVIDIA and Google have each subscribed for $10 billion, while AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft, and TSMC are also participating, all through the private placement.
In other words, before the listing, industry capital has already filled the underwriting book. TSMC's move is the most symbolic.
On November 10, its board approved an investment of up to $1 billion: $500 million to subscribe for Anthropic common stock at the IPO price, and another $500 million to subscribe for OpenAI preferred shares. It's the first time a foundry has stepped in to buy an equity stake in a customer. The logic is simple: Anthropic needs advanced-process chips to train its models, and TSMC is an unavoidable supplier. When a supplier becomes a shareholder, it effectively locks future orders into its own production lines. The boundaries between supplier and customer have blurred in this AI cycle. There's another way to read this subscription structure beyond the terminology: industry capital isn't investing in the future of an AI company; it's backing the credit of its own downstream customer. NVIDIA's money and TSMC's shares are another link in the industry's self-reinforcing chain.
The same players are buying the stock and selling the chips. This cycle deserves a closer look.

Can revenue support a $1.4 trillion valuation?
The relationship between valuation and revenue is the biggest point of contention around this IPO, and also a calculation that ordinary readers can most easily do for themselves.
The registration filing disclosed that Anthropic generated $17 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2026, up more than 12-fold year over year; the number of customers with annualized revenue exceeding $100k also grew more than 12-fold. Quarterly revenue of $17 billion annualizes to about $68 billion. At the upper valuation limit of $1.4 trillion, the price-to-sales ratio is about 20 times. For comparison, SpaceX was valued at about $1.35 trillion in its latest private-market round, but its revenue structure is completely different, so a direct comparison isn't very meaningful.

Whether 20 times sales is high depends on whether you believe in the growth rate.
Year-over-year growth of 12 times means the company is still changing dramatically, and last year's denominator was so small that it offers little basis for comparison. Historically, the market has rarely given a company with quarterly revenue of $17 billion and rapid growth a price-to-sales ratio above 20 times — the last comparable case eventually lost 80% of its market value. Another point of comparison is OpenAI. According to CNBC, citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI raised $15 billion in its latest private round at a pre-money valuation of $1.25 trillion; its third-quarter revenue was about $10 billion, with an adjusted operating loss of about $10.9 billion.
The contrast between the two is clearer side by side: OpenAI has lower revenue and a lower valuation, but loses more; Anthropic has higher revenue, and media estimates put its adjusted margin at about 15% (a media estimate, not confirmed by the company). If that margin is accurate, Anthropic's IPO story is indeed easier to tell than OpenAI's “high growth, high cash burn” narrative.
There is uncertainty here: how much of the $17 billion in revenue comes from computing purchases by related parties, and how much from one-off contracts? The registration filing has only just begun to provide detailed disclosures, so outsiders are making only rough calculations for now.
543 times is the scary calculation; 20 times is the optimistic one. The real answer is in the details of the prospectus.

Bubble or benchmark
The significance of this IPO for the entire industry is greater than its significance for Anthropic itself.
Private-market valuations don't have public prices. AI companies raise round after round, and whether it's $1.4 trillion or $2 trillion, those are numbers worked out by investors and founders behind closed doors.
The public market is different: buyers and sellers vote every day with real money. So once Anthropic lists, it will become the valuation benchmark for the entire AI sector. If it rises, OpenAI will feel emboldened to push up its valuation in the next round; if it falls below its IPO price, fundraising will become harder for every AI company that hasn't yet gone public.
That's why NVIDIA, Google, and TSMC would rather put up real money to help it list “successfully” — if the benchmark sinks, all the boats will rock. Talk of a bubble hasn't gone away, either. The private placement takes up most of the allocation, meaning the actual public float is limited and the price could be distorted in the early days of trading. Whether the stock surges or plunges on day one, neither should be treated as a meaningful signal. That's the most important thing to keep in mind when watching this IPO.
Regulators are also keeping an eye on it. The fundraising scale is unprecedented, and many of the related-party subscribers are its suppliers and competitors. The complexity of these interests is enough to make any inquiry letter headline news. There's another angle that gets less attention: the significance of Anthropic's listing for the AI talent market. Going public means options become tradable shares, giving thousands of employees who hold options a clear figure for their wealth overnight.
Based on the pattern of tech company IPOs in the past, a wave of employee movement tends to follow around the lockup expiration — whether people stay or leave is just the surface; the key is that it will drive a reassessment of compensation benchmarks across the industry. For competitors, this IPO is also a mirror. OpenAI remains privately held, while Anthropic is listing first, giving it earlier access to public-market financing. From then on, the two companies will compete not only on model capabilities but also on how quickly they can load up on capital ammunition — public-company stock is itself a currency for acquisitions.

What to watch after November 18
Pricing will be finalized on November 18, and the listing is expected a few days later. Here are a few signals to watch:
First, look at the turnover rate of the day-one float to gauge whether industry investors' shares are locked up;
Second, compare the opening market capitalization with $1.4 trillion: the market's first vote with its feet;
Third, watch whether revenue growth slows in the first earnings report after the listing — if growth drops from 12-fold to single-digit multiples, the story behind a 20-times price-to-sales ratio will immediately fall apart.
The spillover effects on the industry are also worth noting: Anthropic's listing will prompt a line of AI companies to file their own registration statements, and over the next two years you'll see more and more AI company prospectuses. When it's time to assess their value, the pricing and performance of this IPO will serve as a textbook example.

My view is that there's little doubt about the $90.4 billion fundraising target; industry capital has already taken it all. The real question is whether the public market will accept a $1.4 trillion price. Players across the industry can prop each other up, but retail investors and public funds in the secondary market are using their own money and their own models. Pricing is set for November 18, and the listing follows a few days later. We'll find out soon.

Would you buy Anthropic at a $1.4 trillion valuation? Share your calculations in the comments.