$2 trillion valuation would put it behind only Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon

Price-to-sales of 30x, but analysts say overvaluation hard to call

OpenAI price cuts, Chinese model competition pose risks

Thin US capital market capacity a key wildcard

Korean investor inflows could weigh on existing AI stocks

Anthropic [Reuters]
Anthropic [Reuters]

An initial public offering by AI model developer Anthropic is coming into view — and the valuation being floated in the market, $2 trillion, would instantly make it the sixth-largest company by market capitalization on US exchanges. But analysts are less focused on the eye-catching price tag than on whether the offering can actually sell, given doubts about whether the market has enough firepower to absorb a mega-sized IPO.

Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 registration statement in June, targeting an IPO in September or October, according to the financial investment industry. The expected market cap being discussed is $2 trillion, with the offering size estimated at around $100 billion. If it hits that valuation target, Anthropic would rank sixth on US exchanges by market cap, trailing only Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.

Anthropic's most recent annualized revenue run rate stands at $65 billion, implying a price-to-sales ratio of roughly 30 times at the projected valuation. That sounds steep in absolute terms, but it is not unusual among AI companies. Palantir, Arm, CrowdStrike, Nebius and Astera Labs are all trading on US exchanges at more than 30 times trailing sales.

On a forward basis, Anthropic's price-to-sales ratio falls to about 10 times projected 2028 revenue — comparable to SpaceX or Tesla. "You cannot simply conclude that Anthropic's $2 trillion market cap is a massive overvaluation," said Kim Min-gyu, a researcher at KB Securities.

The problem, however, is that price and popularity are two different things. "The environment is not exactly favorable for a blockbuster debut," Kim said.

The first headwind is intensifying competition. OpenAI has been steadily cutting token prices on its high-performance models, emerging as a risk factor for the Anthropic IPO. The rapid rise of high-performance Chinese open-weight models has put Anthropic in a position where it must prove its edge not only in technology but also on price.

Growth trajectory is another concern. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate reached $65 billion in July, up 38 percent from the prior reading of $47 billion. That is strong growth, but it marks a deceleration from the 57 percent increase reported the time before. With investor expectations for high-growth AI companies running high heading into the IPO process, slowing growth could become a variable that weighs on the offering's reception.

The bigger issue may be the availability of capital in US markets. If Anthropic follows SpaceX onto public exchanges, this year's total US IPO volume is on track to set an all-time record. A surge in corporate bond issuance by AI-related companies adds to concerns about whether the capital markets have enough capacity to absorb the supply.

Hyperscalers such as Alphabet and Amazon have already been tapping bond markets in Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia to sidestep rising US borrowing costs — a sign that the market may not have the depth needed to carry a blockbuster Anthropic IPO.

Whatever happens globally, domestic investor interest is expected to run hot. After SpaceX's listing, Korean investors directed 97 percent of their net purchases of US stocks toward SpaceX alone during the following month.

Conditions have improved since then — the won-dollar exchange rate is more favorable and trading on the domestic market has quieted, pushing funds toward US equities — and analysts say an Anthropic IPO could accelerate that trend further.

If the Anthropic IPO succeeds, concerns about AI investment could ease temporarily, but investors may shift toward buying AI companies directly rather than the downstream firms that profit from AI — potentially drawing capital away from semiconductors, cloud and other existing AI-related stocks. Conversely, a weak IPO could dampen expectations for the AI industry as a whole, quickly spreading anxiety to downstream sectors such as cloud and memory chips.

In short, even a successful IPO could limit the upside for existing AI-related stocks as flows concentrate in Anthropic, while a disappointing one could spread concern to downstream industries including cloud and memory chips.

"We will need to watch whether the won strengthens further, but the environment for buying US stocks is better than it was at the time of the SpaceX IPO," Kim said. "Anthropic could pull in flows even more aggressively, leaving other AI themes to take a breather for a while."


th5@heraldcorp.com