Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Is a 'Ridiculous' Bet, Analyst Says
Research Firm Calls Anthropic's IPO 'Unprecedented Test of Investor Gullibity'
New Constructs calls Anthropic's upcoming Nasdaq listing the 'most ridiculous IPO of 2026,' valuing the AI company at just $150 billion against its reported $2 trillion target. With 2025 revenue of $4.6 billion and a $42 billion net loss, the firm argues open-source competition leaves Anthropic without a viable business. The report warns of an 'unprecedented test of investor gullibility' and echoes its 2019 WeWork call.
While Anthropic offers more to society than WeWork ever did, at a $2 trillion valuation, its IPO presents far bigger risks and is positioned to be a far bigger rip off of U.S. capital markets.
- simonw
"The company’s growing operating losses" - yeah, if you are a "research firm" basing your research on the leaked 2025 Anthropic financials and not what happened in 2026 you are on the verge of malpractice.
(I think 2 trillion dollars is an absurd valuation for a product with such hot competition and low switching cost, but if you make the case that Anthropic is losing money based on the 2025 numbers from that Reuters report you're being farcical.)
UPDATE: I found the actual New Horizons report here - it does acknowledge the 2026 numbers, unlike the linked CNBC story about that report: https://www.newconstructs.com/anthropic-is-the-most-ridiculo...
"The company grew revenue twelvefold in 2025 to ~$4.6 billion. According to the New York Times, Anthropic is on pace to generate $100 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026."
It does lean into those 2025 figures when talking about Anthropic's losses though, which is weird when Anthropic have supposedly claimed two profitable quarters in 2026.
- binlog
New Constructs is bearish on every tech IPO. Easy to reinforce your bias by selectively looking at instances where they were right, like WeWork, but they also predicted failed IPOs for Spotify (+219%), Uber (+60%), CrowdStrike (+3136%), Cloudflare (+2306%), Palantir (+1991%), Snowflake (+51%), DoorDash (+93%), Robinhood (+187%), ARM (+422%), Instacart (+59%), Reddit (+370%), CoreWeave (+105%), SpaceX (+20%) and lots more.
So whatever your stance on Anthropic this particular analysis is safe to ignore.
- mattmaroon
$2 trillion is a lot of money and certainly doesn’t seem a safe bet at that price. But also, their revenue went from <$0 in 2024 to $4b in 2025 to what will likely be >15x that in 2026. Has anything ever grown that fast before?
If you carry that forward even one year, and I’m not saying you certainly can, they’re outselling NVIDIA.
I get it, there are risks, scalability issues, low cost competitors, etc. $2 trillion is a big number, but it’s tiny compared to all human payroll.
I’m not buying it either but I dont think anyone who does failed an IQ test.
- anon373839
I don't see how Anthropic can become profitable enough to justify its investments unless they can either stop training models ("Pace the Frontier!!1"), or magically eliminate open source competition so that their volume x margin on inference is high enough to dwarf the training costs.
For the IPO, I assume they're going to try to get everyone to focus on inference - which is profitable in isolation. But I don't know how they'll distract the market from the other half of the equation.
- calgoo
I thought this was the reason to force an investor account on every american child, so that they can be "forced" to buy into these IPOs, and left holding the worthless stock while a massive amount of wealth is transferred from the system to a select few investors.
- scandox
> In an interview with CNBC in 2021, Trainer acknowledged that “crazy stuff happens” and New Constructs doesn’t always get it right.
> “I can’t let that bother me,” he said at the time. “I have to stay true to what I think is right.”
Monkey remains true to darts, dartboard.
- liendolucas
> The New Constructs report also notes that Anthropic’s assertion that AI could pose “a catastrophic or existential risk to humanity” is another reason why investors should avoid the IPO.
So, we go from an existential threat to basically unprofitable business. I can only see Amodei and Altman just as the next Holmes.
- rwmj
I posted other (different) research into the IPO yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50033644