Anthropic’s $2tn IPO hinges on 2028 revenue forecast

Anthropic’s path to a potential $2 trillion initial public offering is now tied to a specific, previously undisclosed internal target: the AI lab expects to generate between $190 billion and $200 billion in revenue by 2028. That forecast, detailed in a Reuters exclusive, is already serving as the cornerstone for bankers and investors who are using it to justify a valuation that would rank among the largest in market history.

The scale of the projected growth is staggering, even by the standards of the current AI boom. As of May 2026, Anthropic’s revenue run rate stood at roughly $47 billion, a dramatic leap from the $9 billion recorded at the end of 2025. Reaching the 2028 goal would require that figure to more than quadruple within a span of just over two years, a pace that defies conventional business logic but is increasingly treated as plausible in this environment.

Near-term performance is certainly accelerating. The company is projecting second-quarter revenue for 2026 of at least $10.9 billion, which would more than double the previous quarter’s results. More notably, Anthropic is reportedly on the verge of posting its first quarterly operating profit, with a forecast figure around $559 million. For a lab that has historically burned through cash at a relentless pace, that milestone would mark a genuine turning point, one that allows proponents to frame the ambitious forecasts not as fantasy, but as a simple extrapolation of current momentum.

The valuation methodology itself is unusual. Rather than pricing Anthropic based on its present earnings, bankers are reportedly applying enterprise-value-to-revenue multiples to the 2028 projections. This two-years-forward approach is rarely used in public markets, though it was deployed ahead of the flotations of Cerebras and SpaceX. It is a framework built for companies growing so rapidly that valuing them on current fundamentals would be meaningless.

Comparable multiples in the market today are aggressive. Palantir trades at roughly 53 times its expected 2026 revenue, while SpaceX and Cloudflare sit near 41.6 times. Apply those kinds of stretch multiples to Anthropic’s projected 2028 haul, and the headline figures start to look internally consistent, if not exactly sober.

The vulnerability in this calculation is that it borrows heavily from the future. It assumes the current enthusiasm in the market will persist long enough to meet the revenue being priced in today. Not everyone is willing to bet on that holding. David Merkel of Aleph Investments captured the sentiment succinctly: “Could they get a $2 trillion valuation, yeah they could and I just wonder if it would stay there over time.” That observation highlights the gap between what a hot market will pay on the day of an IPO and what it will tolerate a year later.

The cost structure adds another layer of caution. Heavy spending on GPUs, compute capacity, and model training continues to squeeze current margins. The bull case rests on the assumption that those costs will decline as a share of revenue as the business scales. If that does not happen, the two-years-forward logic begins to wobble, because the entire exercise trades present profitability for future size.

Valuation chatter has been climbing for months. Anthropic has already received investor offers at an $800 billion valuation and has been reported to be seeking closer to $900 billion in a mooted $50 billion funding round. The IPO speculation has now pushed toward the $2 trillion mark, a figure that once seemed fanciful but is now part of the mainstream conversation.

The broader risk is that the entire edifice depends on a forecast holding in a market that could turn. Cheaper rivals are already threatening the economics that underpin these valuations, and a two-years-forward multiple is only as reliable as the year it points toward. For now, the story is one that raises eyebrows across the Atlantic: dazzling growth, genuine questions about margins, and a valuation resting almost entirely on a number that nobody can yet verify.

Anthropic may well hit $200 billion in revenue by 2028. Its recent run of results lends the ambition more credibility than it once had. But the market is being asked to price the company as though that arrival is already booked, and to do so a full two years before the receipts come in.