In pricing Anthropic, investors are carefully estimating its revenue two years out

As Anthropic prepares for its largest-ever IPO, which it filed in June, Wall Street analysts are trying to estimate its future capitalization, looking out two years. The calculation is based on the company’s own forecast, according to which its revenue in 2028 could reach $190-200 billion, writes Reuters.

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Anthropic expects revenue to reach $190 billion to $200 billion in 2028, Reuters sources said. That’s significantly higher than the $47 billion revenue run rate (RRR) it posted in May, which reflected its current annualized business pace. As a result, the company expects revenue to increase approximately fourfold in less than three years.

Bankers and investors use multiples of enterprise value to revenue based on forecasts. This is a common approach for fast-growing software developers that have yet to establish stable levels of profit. However, it is much less common to value companies based on two-year forecasts. In Anthropic’s case, this approach reflects the rapid growth of the business and the difficulty of valuing the company, which continues to spend significant amounts of money developing its artificial intelligence infrastructure.

However, this approach has precedent among fast-growing companies that have recently gone public. In particular, Cerebras Systems investors used revenue forecasts through 2028 ahead of the company’s IPO this year and also considered forecasts through 2029 when valuing SpaceX ahead of its IPO.

By analyzing public companies with similar growth rates and business models, investors can obtain a benchmark for valuing Anthropic and determine a revenue or earnings multiple to apply to its financial forecasts. Palantir, for example, is valued at 53 times this year’s expected revenue, while SpaceX and Cloudflare trade at 41.6 times expected 2026 revenue, according to LSEG.

Anthropic forecasts revenue of at least $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2026, more than double the previous quarter. The company also expects to post an operating profit of $559 million for the first time this quarter. According to Anthropic, it expects annual revenue to grow more than tenfold annually through 2026.

Such rapid growth forces investors to look ahead to 2028 when evaluating the company. Their calculations are based on the assumption that Anthropic’s current heavy spending on computing power, model training, inference, and recruiting will grow more slowly than revenue over time. As technology advances, model training and operations can become more efficient, and personnel and infrastructure costs can decrease as a proportion of revenue.

Separately, Anthropic investors expect the company to launch an IPO with a valuation of $2 trillion or more, which would allow it to surpass SpaceX and set a new public offering record. financial times. The placement could take place as soon as October, according to the Financial Times.