The banks running Anthropic’s IPO estimate its 2028 revenue at around $270 billion to $280 billion and use that figure to value the company, Reuters reported on 13 November, citing two people familiar with the projections. The $275 billion midpoint is 60 times the $4,585 million of revenue Anthropic reported for 2025 in its amended prospectus, by our arithmetic.
It is also 41% above the $190 billion to $200 billion 2028 projection Reuters reported in August, comparing midpoints, and 3.4 times the $81 billion run-rate Anthropic gives for 31 October, by our arithmetic.
Business Pill · IPO float
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on IPO float: the share of a company that trades after a listing. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Anthropic’s revenue estimates.
The key insight: As we read the Reuters report against the filing, the valuation now rests on a year Anthropic has not reported: the banks’ 2028 estimate of around $270 billion to $280 billion is 60 times the $4,585 million of 2025 revenue in the prospectus and 3.4 times the $81 billion run-rate it gives for 31 October, by our arithmetic.
Reuters says the 2028 figure is “the key figure underpinning valuation models”, and that banks apply enterprise-value-to-revenue multiples to it to reach their valuation estimates.
Some sell-side projections put revenue at about $52 billion to $53 billion in 2026 and $135 billion to $137 billion in 2027, one person told Reuters. On midpoints, that is 2.6 times from 2026 to 2027 and 2.0 times from 2027 to 2028, by our arithmetic.
Reuters says certain buy-side projections run 10% to 15% higher for 2026 and 2027, according to an investor who has placed an order. One investor who studied the deal and decided not to take part has an outlook about 30% below the sell-side estimate for 2028, Reuters reports. Measured against $270 billion to $280 billion, that would be about $189 billion to $196 billion, by our arithmetic, close to the range Reuters reported in August.
The book was six times oversubscribed by the end of Thursday, one person told Reuters, after about two times on the first day of the roadshow. Our oversubscription piece covers the earlier Bloomberg report.
Anthropic revenue: 2025 as filed in the S-1/A; 2026-2027 sell-side and 2028 bank estimates as reported by Reuters on 13 November, and the 2028 projection Reuters reported on 14 August. Midpoints are our arithmetic.
The Filing Against the Model
Anthropic’s Amendment No. 2 to its S-1 reports revenue of $4,585 million for 2025 and $33,242 million for the nine months to 30 September 2026. It says its “Run-Rate Revenue was approximately $81 billion as of October 31, 2026, up $10 billion from September 30, 2026”, which our run-rate piece covers.
The filing says 13,086,672,593 shares of all classes will be outstanding after the offering and the concurrent private placement. At the $70 to $78 range, that is $916.1 billion to $1,020.8 billion, or 3.3 to 3.8 times the banks’ 2028 revenue estimate, by our arithmetic, before cash and excluding options and RSUs.
The nine-month revenue of $33,242 million is 63% of the $52.5 billion sell-side 2026 midpoint, by our arithmetic. The figures for 2027 and 2028 are estimates from people familiar with the models, not company guidance; the prospectus gives no forecast.
What Investors Are Asking
Reuters reports two questions on the roadshow: whether Anthropic can keep its lead as rivals such as Alphabet’s Google catch up, and whether Claude can carry its lead beyond coding into the wider market for knowledge workers.
One investor told Reuters the company had not given detailed answers to some questions, and an investor who attended one group meeting said it had no conference call for institutional investors to dial in. Anthropic declined to comment on the investor’s remarks; Morgan Stanley declined to comment, and Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond, Reuters says.
SpaceX and CrowdStrike are among the benchmarks in the valuation models, one person told Reuters. The stakes held by the two largest investors are covered in our pieces on Amazon and Google, and the full timeline is in our IPO map.
The Structural Read
As we read the two Reuters reports, the 2028 figure has moved up since August: the banks’ midpoint of $275 billion is 41% above the $195 billion midpoint of the projection Reuters reported then, by our arithmetic, and the report does not say what changed.
As we read the range of forecasts Reuters describes, the IPO price depends on how much of that growth buyers accept: at the $70 to $78 range the market value is 3.3 to 3.8 times the banks’ 2028 estimate, while one investor who passed sits about 30% below it, by our arithmetic.
Reuters, 13 November 2026
“The key figure underpinning valuation models is Anthropic’s projected 2028 revenue”
Three Implications
FOR IPO BUYERS The price range values Anthropic at 3.3 to 3.8 times the banks’ 2028 revenue estimate on the 13,086,672,593 shares the filing says will be outstanding, by our arithmetic; pricing is expected on 18 November.
FOR READING FORECASTS The 2026 to 2028 figures are estimates from people familiar with the models, as Reuters reported them, not company guidance; the prospectus reports historical revenue and a run-rate.
FOR ANTHROPIC’S BACKERS The stakes held by Amazon and Google are valued at the IPO range in our earlier pieces; the 2028 estimate is the figure the banks apply multiples to, Reuters says.
The framework states: “Inference is a revenue engine”.
As we read it, the banks’ 2028 estimate is a bet on that engine running at 3.4 times its October pace within about two years, by our arithmetic; the framework was published before the IPO and does not discuss these estimates.
What Is Not Established
The $270 billion to $280 billion figure comes from people familiar with the projections, not from Anthropic or the banks, and Reuters says details could change. It is not established which banks hold which figure, or whether the August projection Reuters reported has since been revised by the company.
Anthropic and its banks were not contacted for this piece.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
The banks’ 2028 estimate of around $270 billion to $280 billion, as Reuters reported it, is 60 times Anthropic’s 2025 revenue at the midpoint and puts the IPO range at 3.3 to 3.8 times that year’s sales, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The 2026-2028 estimates come from Reuters’ report of 13 November 2026, read in full via syndication, which cites people familiar with the projections, and from Reuters’ report of 14 August 2026. Revenue, run-rate and share figures come from Anthropic’s Amendment No. 2 to its S-1 on SEC EDGAR. Midpoints, multiples and ratios are our arithmetic. Anthropic and its banks were not contacted for this piece.
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.
