Institutional investors who plan to buy shares in Anthropic’s initial public offering have told the company and its advisers that its valuation should be around $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, 2 November, citing people familiar with the matter. The Journal said that is well below figures closer to $2 trillion that had been bandied about in recent months, and tied the push to last week’s rout in technology stocks.
By our arithmetic, $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion is 22 to 24 times Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue of $16.96 billion annualised, against about 29.5 times at $2 trillion.
Business Pill · Run-Rate Revenue
A one-minute Business Engineer explainer of run-rate revenue: what an annualised number does and does not tell you. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss Anthropic or its IPO.
The key insight: The Journal reports that institutional IPO buyers want $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion for Anthropic, which by our arithmetic is 22 to 24 times its third-quarter revenue annualised: close to the roughly 21 times its then-stated run rate at which the May private round was priced, by our earlier arithmetic, and below the 29.5 times a $2 trillion value would be.
The report, by Corrie Driebusch and Kate Clark, says that “In the past several days, institutional investors told the Claude maker and its advisers” that the valuation in its planned IPO “later this month” should be around $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Journal’s opening line says “The rout in technology stocks last week has big investors who plan to participate in Anthropic’s IPO coalescing around a lower valuation for the artificial-intelligence giant.” Its subheading says these investors “show concern following a selloff in tech stocks”.
The Journal’s technology account posted the story on X at 21:40 UTC. We read the headline, subheading and first two paragraphs; the rest of the article is behind the paywall, and those paragraphs carry no comment from Anthropic.
Valuation markers for Anthropic’s IPO as a multiple of its third-quarter 2026 revenue annualised ($16.96 billion x 4 = $67.8 billion), our arithmetic. Range per The Wall Street Journal (2 Nov); $2 trillion per Reuters (15 Oct); perpetual per Liquid’s market page (2 Nov); Series H per Anthropic (May 2026); revenue per Anthropic’s Form S-1/A.
The Range Against Anthropic’s Own Revenue
Anthropic’s amended Form S-1, filed with the SEC on 2 November, puts third-quarter revenue at $16,956 million, up from $11,555 million in the second quarter and $1,382 million a year earlier. Multiplied by four, the third quarter comes to about $67.8 billion a year, by our arithmetic.
On that base, $1.5 trillion is 22.1 times and $1.6 trillion is 23.6 times, by our arithmetic. The roughly $2 trillion that the Journal says had been bandied about would be 29.5 times. Annualising a single quarter is a simple run rate, not a forecast.
Over the four quarters to 30 September, the same filing’s quarterly table adds up to $35.3 billion of revenue, by our arithmetic. Against that trailing figure, the range is 42.5 to 45.3 times.
The gap is large in dollars. The midpoint of the range, $1.55 trillion, is about $450 billion, or 22.5%, below $2 trillion, by our arithmetic.
Update, 2 Nov: Googleโs option to buy up to $10B of shares at the IPO price. A lower IPO price would also change the arithmetic of one Google term in the filing, a point Shay Boloor raised on X on Monday. Anthropicโs S-1/A says: โIn connection with the Google 2026 NPA, we granted Google an option to purchase up to $10.0 billion of our Class N common stock in a private placement concurrent with this offering at the initial public offering price, which would reduce the amount of notes available for issuance under the Google 2026 NPA by a corresponding amount if exercised.โ The 26 October S-1 had the same option, worded โat the public offering priceโ rather than โat the initial public offering priceโ, and we first reported the option in Googleโs Anthropic Loop: $114.5B Committed, $30B Funding. The filing describes Class N common stock as non-voting and lists $20.0 billion still available under that Google facility, so by our reading, exercising the option would turn part of Googleโs existing funding commitment into shares rather than add new money. The filing does not say whether Google will exercise it. Illustrative only, our arithmetic, treating each valuation as the whole company and ignoring dilution details the filing does not give: $10 billion would be about 0.67% of a $1.5 trillion company, 0.63% at $1.6 trillion and 0.50% at $2 trillion, so at $1.5 trillion the same $10 billion buys about a third more shares than at $2 trillion.
Where the Pre-IPO Markets Sit
Earlier on Monday, Liquid’s pre-IPO perpetual on Anthropic was priced at about $1.738 trillion, and Polymarket’s most-backed bracket for the valuation at the IPO price was $1.50 trillion to $1.75 trillion, at 65.6%, as we reported in Anthropic Perp Slips to $1.74T; Odds Favor $1.5T-$1.75T IPO.
The range the Journal reports sits inside that Polymarket bracket. Its top, $1.6 trillion, is about $138 billion below the perpetual’s $1.738 trillion, and its bottom about $238 billion below, by our arithmetic. The perpetual is a cash-settled contract with no share ownership or IPO allocation rights, its venue says.
The Same Number, Two Weeks On
Reuters reported on 15 October that some investors who attended Anthropic’s investor day discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, down from the roughly $2 trillion previously floated, as we covered in Anthropic Investors Weigh $1.5T IPO Value, Down From $2T. That account tied the step down to slower quarter-on-quarter growth.
The Journal’s report differs in who is speaking and why: institutional investors that plan to buy in the IPO, telling Anthropic and its advisers, after the past week’s selloff in tech stocks.
Anthropic’s last private round, the $65 billion Series H in May, valued it at $965 billion post-money, according to Anthropic. We worked out in Anthropic Valuation and Funding History that this was about 21 times the “over $47 billion” run rate the company stated at the time. The range now reported is close to that multiple, though the two use different revenue measures.
As we read it, the argument has moved from the level of the number to the multiple behind it: the range the Journal reports sits inside Polymarket’s most-backed bracket and below Liquid’s perpetual, both of which we reported earlier on Monday.
As we read the two reports, the 15 October account came from investor-day attendees and centred on growth, while the 2 November account comes from institutions planning to buy and centres on the tech selloff. The number they arrive at is much the same.
The Wall Street Journal, 2 Nov 2026
“well below figures closer to $2 trillion that had been bandied about in recent months”
Three Implications
FOR THE OFFER PRICE The amended S-1 still gives no price range or share count, so the range the Journal reports has not been confirmed by Anthropic.
FOR THE MULTIPLE By our arithmetic, each $100 billion of valuation is about 1.5 times Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue annualised.
FOR THE PRE-IPO MARKETS Liquid’s perpetual at about $1.738 trillion sits above the top of the reported range, by our arithmetic; the contract carries no share ownership or allocation rights, its venue says.
The framework reads: “Models, compute, silicon, foundries — none of them can be priced as standalone technology assets anymore.”
As we read it, the push the Journal reports is one such pricing in practice: institutional buyers marking down a model company after a selloff in the chip and infrastructure stocks around it. The framework does not discuss Anthropic’s offering.
We read only the first two paragraphs of the Journal’s article. Anthropic has not published a price range, share count or offering size; the amended filing leaves the price range blank. Which institutions gave the range, and whether Anthropic or its bankers accept it, is not stated in what we read. We did not contact Anthropic.
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The Journal reports that institutional IPO buyers told Anthropic its valuation should be around $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion, well below the roughly $2 trillion talked about earlier. By our arithmetic, that is 22 to 24 times its third-quarter revenue annualised.
A note on sourcing. The valuation range is from The Wall Street Journal, of which we read the headline, subheading and first two paragraphs; the 15 October account is from Reuters as summarised by Investing.com. Revenue figures are from Anthropic’s SEC Form S-1/A. Every multiple and gap is our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
