Anthropic has taken a step toward the stock market. On June 1, the creator of Claude submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the SEC, the US market regulator - the registration document that precedes a Wall Street listing. "Confidential" is a bit of a misnomer: it is the content of the filing that remains secret, not its existence (we explain this paradox here). The price, the number of shares, and the timeline have not yet been set. The listed stock does not exist yet, although it is still possible to bet on it.
A private company already valued like a Nasdaq giant
Forget the classic tech IPO; we are moving into a different league. On May 28, Anthropic closed a $65bn funding round that values it at $965bn, up from $380bn in February, according to the company itself. In the process, it has overtaken OpenAI for the first time. Not twice as expensive, but ahead: $965bn for the creator of Claude, versus $852bn for the creator of ChatGPT. Founded by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has just overtaken its former home.
Anthropic is highlighting an annualized revenue of $47bn. Be wary of this figure. What is known as the run-rate takes the revenue pace of a recent month and projects it over twelve months. It gives you the speed, not the solidity. Margins, cash flow, and profitability are not yet visible to the public. For that, we will have to wait for the public S-1, which will force Anthropic to open its books.
To put the figure into perspective, let us compare. SpaceX is targeting around $1.75 trillion for its IPO, according to the latest rumors. Anthropic already weighs more than half of that. And if it were ranked in the Nasdaq 100, it would be in about tenth place, between Micron and Walmart, ahead of AMD and ASML, based on the index's current market capitalizations.
We discussed this a few weeks ago. Since May 1, the Nasdaq Fast Entry rule allows a very large IPO to join the index on an accelerated basis if it ranks among its top 40 eligible capitalizations. At $965bn, Anthropic would have the stature. It still needs to choose the Nasdaq, its free float must pass the filters, and the public market must truly validate this valuation.
Buying Anthropic without buying Anthropic
The stock does not exist yet, but you can already gain exposure to Anthropic. This is the anomaly pointed out by Bloomberg. Three British funds managed by Baillie Gifford hold stakes in the company: Scottish Mortgage Trust, Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust, and The Schiehallion Fund. Anthropic accounts for approximately 2.6% of the first, 7.5% of the second, and 7.3% of the third.
Except you are not buying an Anthropic share. You are buying a listed fund, with its fees, its discount or premium, its portfolio of private holdings, and its other bets, including SpaceX or Stripe according to Bloomberg. Anthropic is just one line item. The advantage is that you get exposure to the private market without the entry ticket usually reserved for large institutional investors. And if Anthropic's IPO is a success, the fund will benefit.
The entry ticket is already expensive
These funds have already benefited from the interplay of supply and demand. They all have a net asset value (NAV), which is the sum of the value of their holdings divided by the number of shares. But on the stock market, the share does not necessarily trade at this price. When it trades above, you pay a premium. According to Bloomberg, Scottish Mortgage is trading at about 5.75% above its NAV, Baillie Gifford US Growth at nearly 4%, and Schiehallion at 16.5%. The market is therefore already charging a premium to access these private equity portfolios.
In the end, you are stacking three prices: Anthropic's private valuation, already at $965bn; the bet that the IPO will happen at a higher level; and the fund's premium. Between February and May, the valuation was multiplied by 2.5. The major private revaluation has therefore already taken place. Nothing prevents the IPO from rising further, but the entry ticket is no longer an "early bird" rate.
Private gem or pre-paid IPO?
Everything will come down to a simple question: will the public market be willing to accept the prices set in private? Anthropic has a strong case to make. Its revenue is exploding, profitability is reportedly on the horizon, and its sector momentum is at its zenith, thanks to the performance of Claude Code.
But Anthropic is not just a software story; it is also a story of chips and data centers. In April, it committed to spending over $100bn over 10 years with AWS for up to 5 gigawatts of capacity. It also signed with Google and Broadcom for 5 gigawatts of TPUs, and even with SpaceX for GPUs. Running Claude costs a fortune.
The figures published as part of the IPO will need to reassure investors and demonstrate that the story is over than 1 trillion USD.
