Anthropic’s planned stock market debut is “an unprecedented test of investor gullibility,” independent research firm New Constructs said in a report titled “Anthropic Is The Most Ridiculous IPO of 2026.” The firm puts the AI company’s equity at as little as $144bn. That is 93% below the $2tn valuation Anthropic is reportedly targeting.
The report came out on 6 October. Since then, Anthropic has told investors its third-quarter revenue reached $16.8bn. Bloomberg has reported that the listing could come as soon as mid-November. The Anthropic IPO valuation debate is heading into its deciding weeks.
New Constructs sells stock research to investors. It used a reverse discounted cash flow model, which works backwards from a price to the profits needed to justify it.
To be worth $2tn, the firm says, Anthropic would need a 10% after-tax operating margin straight away and hold it for a decade. Revenue would also need to grow 1,000% this year, 100% in 2027 and 56% a year from 2028 to 2035. The report puts Anthropic’s 2025 operating margin at minus 175%.
In that case, Anthropic’s after-tax operating profit would reach $358bn in 2035. That is “2.0x NVIDIA’s $184 billion and 2.6x Apple’s $136 billion” in trailing profit, the report says. Revenue would reach $3.6tn. That is about 1.4 times the combined trailing revenue of Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Oracle.
The $144bn figure is the firm’s lowest scenario. It assumes margins improve to 20% over ten years and growth slows to 20% a year from 2028. Anthropic would then make $89bn in after-tax operating profit in 2035, what Meta made over the past twelve months. A middle case, with 36% annual growth, gives $1.1tn. That is still 43% below the target.
No pricing power, the firm says
“In short, we don’t think Anthropic has a viable business.”
The report argues that open-source models make it hard for closed models to turn a profit. It also says Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 cost about 18 times more than DeepSeek R1 for input tokens and 23 times more for output tokens.
The firm says it has not seen Anthropic’s prospectus, which was filed confidentially, and worked from reports of the leaked financials. Its record on big listings is mixed, CNBC reported. WeWork pulled its IPO six weeks after the firm called it the most ridiculous of 2019. Its 2020 pick, DoorDash, has held up as a public company. Anthropic did not respond to CNBC.
The same numbers, read another way
PitchBook senior analyst Harrison Rolfes ran the multiples on 5 October. At $2tn, Anthropic would be valued at about 435 times its 2025 revenue, he wrote. Against annualised second-quarter revenue of more than $46bn, the multiple drops below 44 times. Against the run rate of more than $65bn reached in late July, it is just under 31 times.
Rolfes also noted that $34bn of the $42bn loss in 2025 came from a non-cash remeasurement of convertible notes. The operating loss was above $8bn. He wrote that third-quarter revenue well above $16.3bn would strengthen the case for the valuation. The $16.8bn Anthropic told investors about this week clears that bar. Rolfes added that it would still not by itself justify $2tn.
Pricing an AI that could go rogue
The third question is one most companies never put to investors. The draft filing gives about 80 of its 261 pages to risk factors, Reuters reported on 29 September. They warn that AI “may pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” They also say models could show “self-preserving behaviors,” including attempts to “resist shutdown.” SpaceX gave about 38 of its 277 pages to risk factors, Reuters noted.
New Constructs puts that warning first on its list of red flags. Anthropic has already described such behaviour in its own research. In May, it said Claude had learned to blackmail from stories about evil AI.
Bloomberg asked on 8 October how investors should put a price on that risk. Slow Ventures partner Sam Lessin has proposed that the US government force AI labs to put $1tn in cash in escrow for any future cleanup.
“The liabilities might be a $2 trillion or $4 trillion risk to society, even before you consider the mass-extinction they talk about,” Lessin told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also noted that the debate has not hurt SpaceX, which pinned much of its plans on AI. Its shares trade more than 20% above their June IPO price.
Public buyers will have little say either way, which Rolfes said warrants a discount. The seven co-founders will keep 50.1% of the votes after the listing through a Founder LLC.