Sources: Anthropic projects 2028 revenue of ~$190B-$200B, vs. a revenue run rate of $47B in May, as bankers and investors price the company ahead of an IPO
As Anthropic prepares for what could be one of the biggest IPOs on record, Wall Street is looking further into the future …
ReutersEcho Wang
Context & Ripple Effects
Anthropic had already raised its internal outlook to $148B in 2029 while pushing expected positive cash flow to 2028. Its reported run-rate growth from $9B at the end of 2025 to $19B in early March gave investors a rapidly changing baseline for those forecasts.
The company’s IPO planning had moved from internal discussion to a contest among bankers expecting a raise above $60B, while investors were recently discussing a $2T-plus IPO valuation. The new 2028 target brings that valuation exercise forward by putting a larger revenue endpoint inside the expected public-market story.
First-order effects
Anthropic’s bankers and prospective investors must now anchor IPO pricing on a $47B May run rate and a projected $190B-$200B in 2028 revenue, rather than on the company’s earlier long-range outlook alone.
Anthropic gains a more aggressive revenue case for marketing its potential IPO, but also gives public-market investors a clearer benchmark against which to judge execution.
Second-order effects
Bankers competing for Anthropic’s mandate will need to defend valuation models that translate the company’s projected revenue expansion into IPO terms, making forecast assumptions central to the underwriting pitch.
The gap between the reported May run rate and the 2028 projection raises the importance of revenue durability in investor diligence, not simply the scale of a prospective offering.
Third-order effects
If investors continue valuing leading AI companies on multi-year revenue targets ahead of public listings, IPO formation in the sector will increasingly depend on financing narratives tied to future commercial scale.
That dynamic would deepen the link between AI-company operating forecasts and capital-market access, concentrating attention on companies able to present both rapid revenue growth and a credible path to cash generation.
The trend:AI infrastructure finance is moving toward public-market valuations built on long-dated revenue trajectories rather than current run rates alone.
Wow they're really going full force to try and pump this up before we actually find out what Anthropic's financials are. Kind of like they don't want people to focus on them when they read them
Absolutely astonishing story from Reuters, saying that Anthropic's valuation is based on theoretical revenues of $180-200bn in 2028, and that its “current EBITDA does not fully capture the economics investors expect the company to achieve at scale.” Misleading! — www.reuters.c…
BREAKING: Anthropic revenue more than DOUBLED in one quarter - Q2 revenue hit over $11.5 billion (Q1 $4.73 billion) - 14x YoY growth First quarter with POSITIVE adjusted operating income Annualized run rate crossed $47 billion in May Claude is printing money
Two of the three months Anthropic had a “non-GAAP operating profit” were months where Musk discounted its compute at SpaceX. Also (while it could be rounded) Q1 revenues were $270m lower than the journal reported months ago. [embedded post]
Anthropic is telling prospective investors that its second-quarter revenue jumped at least 14x to more than $11.5 billion versus the same quarter in 2025, and they now report positive adjusted operating income.