Some may feel they are hearing Fantozzi claim to be a member of the national ski team. For others, however, it is a real possibility—one of those plot twists that only the financial world can create. The underwriters and banks reportedly handling Anthropic’s IPO expect to raise more than $100 billion, which would give the company a value/market capitalization of $2 trillion.

Do these figures make sense? It would mean doubling the group’s valuation in just June, during its latest funding round. To put this into perspective, Anthropic would enter the stock market’s super-Olympus, above the $2,000,000,000,000 mark—a level reached to date only by Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple.

Numbers Running Wild?

In reality, we know relatively little about Anthropic’s financials, apart from what has emerged from reports in certain newspapers. And we are still dealing with a sector—the LLM sector—with a future full of uncertainty, relatively shallow and difficult-to-value moats.

According to the latest reports published by U.S. newspapers, however, several banks involved in the listing process are reportedly targeting $100 billion for the shares that would be offered to the market—and therefore a market capitalization slightly above $2 trillion.

AFP asked Anthropic for comment, but the company declined. Perhaps we will need to sit down with pen and paper once the financial data are published—as is necessary before a stock-market listing.

Other Issues

IPOs need HYPE—and not in the sense of Hyperliquid’s cryptocurrency. They need enormous enthusiasm, especially from retail investors, encouraging them to invest at any price in the near certainty that they are taking home a jewel that will be of immeasurable value. These mechanisms can make the reports leaked to the press slightly exaggerated—a phenomenon we have already seen with SpaceX, which launched straight above $200 and then traded at little more than half that price.

So be careful about taking certain advance reports at face value: they are often carefully timed, with all the participants in the IPO food chain—retail investors excluded—always wanting more, if we may use the crude metaphor, cash cows to milk.