Anthropic IPO- Opportunity of the Year or AI Bubble?

0:00 Anthropic has already filed to go public. In its last private funding round, valued the company at 965 billion. That makes Anthropic one of the biggest IPO stories the market has ever seen. Sounds risky. Sounds exciting. My name is Blake and today on 9 to 5 Investing, we are breaking down what Anthropic actually filed, why Claude's growth has investors so excited, how the nearly $1 trillion valuation stacks up against revenues, which financial numbers are still missing, and the checklist that I would use before buying a single share.

0:34 First, let's separate the filing from the hype. On June 1st, 2026, Anthropic had said that it filed a draft S-1 to the SEC. That gives the company the option to go public after the SEC completes its review. This confidential submission does not give us public financial statements, a share count, a price range, an exchange, or a confirmed trading date. The company has specifically said that the number of shares and the price that they will trade at has not been specified yet.

1:07 Reporting has pointed to a possible fall listing, but until that S-1 becomes public, treat every valuation target and IPO date as basically a guess. Now, look at why investors are paying attention. Anthropic says run rate revenue was about $1 billion at the beginning of 2025, above 5 billion in August of that year, 14 billion in February of 2026, and more than 47 billion in May. That is not audited GAAP revenue, however, and run rate revenue is a snapshot extrapolated forward, but either way, the direction is extraordinary.

1:46 Anthropic also said that eight of the Fortune 10 were customers. More than 500 customers were spending north of a million dollars on an annualized basis, and Claude code had passed a 2.5 billion dollar revenue run rate by the end of February. The bull case here is simple. Claude is becoming infrastructure for enterprise knowledge level work, not just another chatbot. Then comes the valuation. Infropic's private valuation climbed from 61.5 billion in March of 2025 to 183 billion in September, to 380 billion in February of 2026, and finally to 965 billion in May of 2026.

2:33 Using the company's 47 billion dollar run rate revenue figure, that last round runs about 20.5 times run rate revenue. At 15 times, the implied value is about 705 billion. At 20 times, it is about 940 billion. At 25 times, it's about 1.18 trillion. Now, those are not price targets because run rate revenue is not going to be the same as audited revenue. And stock price will also depend on how many shares are actually issued. But the math shows the challenge.

3:03 An IPO near 1 trillion dollars demands exceptional growth, plus future margins that look more like great software rather than infrastructure. Infropic's strongest strategic argument is distribution. Infropic says that Claude is the first frontier model available to AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It has also announced up to five new gigawatts of capacity with Amazon. Five gigawatts of next generation TPU capacity with Broadcom and Google, and access to GPU capacity from SpaceX.

3:40 AWS remains its primary cloud provider and training partner. That mix gives Infropic the reach and hardware diversity, but the same infrastructure is also a risk. These hyperscalers can be suppliers, investors, distributors, and competitors all at the same time. In the public filing, I want to see compute commitments, cloud concentration, customer concentration, and gross margins by product. Growth does not create value if the incremental revenue is just going to be consumed by the cost of compute, which brings us to the missing numbers at this point.

4:21 Before I even attempt to value the stock, I want audited revenue numbers, gross margins, operating losses, free cash flow, stock-based compensation, compute purchase commitments, and customer concentration. I also want to understand how much of that offering is going to be primary shares that fund the company versus secondary shares that let early investors cash out. None of that is visible yet in that confidential draft. The most important question is not whether Claude is a good product, because it's pretty clear that it is.

4:52 It is whether Anthropic can convert this demand into durable cash flow faster than the cost of training and delivering each new generation of models. Anthropic also comes with governance that is a bit different from your typical technology IPO. It is a Delaware public benefit corporation, so its directors can balance the stockholders' financial interests with its public benefit mission. Anthropic's independent long-term benefit trust has no equity stake, and as of April of 2026, trust-appointed directors make up the majority of the board.

5:29 Mission alignment can be a strength, especially in a business making long-term duration safety decisions. But investors need to understand that the control rights might not work the same way as a shareholder-first type of corporation. The public S-1, when it comes out, should explain voting power, board election rights, and the trust class T stock, and how conflicts between safety decisions and short-term profits are handled. That is not automatically a deal breaker, it is a valuation input.

6:00 Even if the business passes the test, IPO price action can distort the decision. The SEC notes, and we saw this with SpaceX recently, that newly issued shares that have a limited supply can be pushed up pretty sharply when the demand is much larger than the public float. Then, lockups expire, often around that 180-day mark, and these additional shares will put pressure on the share price. So, an IPO day pop is not a confirmation of value for making this a long-term investment.

6:29 My process is to read the prospectus, compare the IPO market cap with a preset valuation range of what I think is reasonable, keep any initial position small, avoid chasing the opening spike, make sure to take note of the lockup expiration date, and revisit the thesis after the first earnings report. You do not have to win the first day to own a great company long-term. My verdict on Infoblox today is interested, but not committed. Infoblox has real enterprise traction, exceptional run rate growth, and distribution across the major cloud platforms.

7:09 It also comes with a private valuation near a trillion dollars, [snorts] undisclosed unit economics, enormous compute obligations, and an unconventional governance structure. If the public S-1 filing shows strong gross margins, improving cash burn, diversified customers, manageable commitments, and an offering price that is close to or below the latest private valuation multiple, I would keep it on my buy list. If the offering leans entirely on run rate revenue while losses, dilution, or commitments remain opaque, I will wait.

7:48 A great company and a great stock to buy are two entirely different questions. For Infroppic, the S-1 and the price will decide. Would you be in a rush to buy Infroppic at a near $1 trillion valuation, or would you wait until after that first earnings report? Let me know in the comments and subscribe to 9-to-5 Investing. Now, if you want to take a step back and look at IPOs from a more generic perspective, check out this video that I made about seven checks that you should make before buying an IPO.