Anthropic files for Nasdaq IPO as 'ANT', eyeing $1.5-2 trillion valuation

Anthropic, the AI lab behind the Claude chatbot, has filed its IPO prospectus. It plans to list on Nasdaq in mid-November under the ticker 'ANT'. The issue size has not been disclosed, but reports say the company is seeking a valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, roughly 75 to 100 times its trailing revenue.

Why the caution? Analysts note that AI is a new kind of technology, much like the engine, the computer or the internet once were. Nobody can yet size Anthropic's addressable market or say how much of it the company will win. The risk factors in the filing add to that uncertainty, and with interest rates still elevated, a valuation this rich has little cushion.

So what does Anthropic actually sell? Founded in 2021, it builds frontier AI models and charges customers to use them. The Claude family includes Mythos, Fable, Opus, Sonnet and Haiku. It also offers Claude Code for software developers and Claude Cowork for automating workflows. Customers range from individuals to large corporations.

Revenue comes in two ways, split roughly 80:20. The larger share is consumption-based: customers pay for the tokens they use. If a developer builds a translation app on Claude, every translation burns tokens, and Anthropic bills the developer. Agentic tools like Claude Code are billed the same way. The smaller share is plain subscriptions for a fixed period.

Anthropic also works hands-on with companies that need help automating complex tasks, such as engineers assisting a pharma firm with drug discovery. Its newer offering, 'Ode with Anthropic', is an AI services company meant to bring Claude to mid-sized businesses with support.

The biggest cost is computing power. Anthropic's models run on data centres operated by Google, Amazon and Microsoft, using chips such as Nvidia GPUs for both training and inference, the step where a trained model answers a user's request. Long-term leases for this capacity took 55 per cent of revenue in the first half of 2026. Personnel costs were another 19 per cent, and about two-thirds of that was paid in share-based awards rather than cash.

Read the original analysis at The Hindu BusinessLine.

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