Anthropic seeks $88.5 billion in IPO that could be the second-largest in history

Anthropic, the creator of the Claude model, filed an updated S-1 this Tuesday (10) for the initial public offering expected to take place as soon as November 2026 on the Nasdaq, under the ticker ANT. The document reveals that the company plans to raise up to $88.5 billion combining the IPO and a simultaneous private placement, which would make the deal the largest capital raise ever associated with a stock market debut, according to Crunchbase News.

For those deciding where to allocate time, teams, and capital in AI products, the size of this offering matters less as a financial curiosity and more as a thermometer: it signals how much institutional money is still willing to bet on the sector, and on what terms.

The numbers behind the offering

The deal is structured in two parts. In the public offering, Anthropic will sell about 825 million shares (of which 23.6 million come from selling shareholders) in the $70 to $78 price range. At the top of that range, the IPO alone raises $62.5 billion, behind only the $75 billion offering made by SpaceX in June 2026.

The second part is a $26 billion private placement, expected to close shortly after the IPO. Investors in this round include AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Nvidia, and TSMC, names that are also suppliers of chips, cloud, and infrastructure to Anthropic itself.

Combined, the two parts put the company's projected fully diluted valuation at up to $1.4 trillion. That's below projections from some investors, who had floated figures close to $2 trillion, but it would still leave Anthropic with the second-largest stock market debut valuation in history, topped only by SpaceX.

Supplier and investor on the same list

The list of private placement participants stands out for one specific reason: Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Microsoft, Google, Micron, and TSMC sell the chips, cloud, and memory Anthropic needs to run its models, and at the same time are investing directly in the company before it goes public.

This kind of circular arrangement (a supplier becoming an investor in the client that buys its capacity) has become common among the biggest generative AI bets, and it raises a question every founder negotiating a strategic partnership with a big tech company should ask: to what extent does reported revenue growth reflect open-market demand, and to what extent does it reflect cross-commitments within a handful of companies that depend on one another.

Real growth, still running a deficit

The operational numbers help explain why there's appetite for this offering. In the first nine months of 2026, Anthropic posted revenue of $33.2 billion, up from $2.5 billion in the same period the year before. In the third quarter alone (ended September 30), quarterly revenue reached $17 billion, starting from close to zero at the company's commercial launch, in the first quarter of 2023.

The company describes this pace as the fastest corporate adoption of any technology in history, according to the S-1 itself as cited by Crunchbase News. In short: the revenue curve is real and documented on the balance sheet, not a pitch deck projection.

The other side of the balance sheet, though, calls for caution from anyone using Anthropic as a benchmark for an AI business model. The company remains in the red: an operating loss of $1.3 billion over the nine months (an improvement from $5.2 billion the year before), but a net loss that jumped to $104 billion, up from $25.1 billion a year earlier.

The S-1 doesn't detail the exact source of this jump in net income, which is more than three times the entire revenue for the period, but the sheer size of the number is something any investor or founder considering raising at similar multiples should look at closely before repeating the comparison.

What changes for those building AI in Brazil

No Brazilian company will compete at the capital scale of this IPO, and that's not the point. What matters for local founders is what this move reveals about the cycle the AI ecosystem is entering:

• Institutional capital is flowing back into AI, but with pricing discipline. The final valuation came in below what much of the market projected, a sign that investors are more selective than at the peak of the 2024-2025 euphoria.
• Infrastructure suppliers (cloud, chips) are willing to become strategic partners of those who consume their capacity at large scale, something Brazilian startups that depend on cloud credits or partnerships with model providers should monitor as a negotiation model.
• Extraordinary revenue growth coexists with an equally extraordinary net loss. This reinforces that, even at the top of the AI market, the path to profitability remains uncertain, which should ease the pressure to replicate valuation multiples from companies like Anthropic in local rounds.
• The IPO window is open again for large AI companies, after SpaceX and now Anthropic, which could accelerate the maturation of other public offering candidates in the sector over the coming quarters.

If the Nasdaq debut goes through on the terms filed, Anthropic will enter the public market as one of the most valuable companies on the planet, even without a profit. For those leading AI teams and products in Brazil, the case is worth less as a valuation target and more as a case study on how the market is currently pricing accelerated growth against equally accelerated losses.