On CNBC’s Morning Call Sheet on Monday, August 17, JonesTrading Chief Market Strategist Mike O’Rourke argued that the coming wave of AI IPO listings hinges on what buyers will pay, not necessarily company quality. According to Reuters, Anthropic is pursuing an IPO built on a 2028 sales projection of $190-200 billion, targeting a 40-50 times revenue multiple comparable to Palantir, Cloudflare, and SpaceX.
O’Rourke’s framing was direct: “First of all, I think Anthropic is incredible. I think they’re a great company. I think Claude is incredible. That said, again, the multiple you want to pay for assets is where the risk is. If you want to overpay, it’s going to be dangerous.”
He layered on his concern about the public’s ability to digest the new supply of shares coming online: “It is going to be an interesting year if 2026 turns out to be, which it looks like it will be, that we got the SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs, because that is tremendous amounts of supply coming on the market.“ Co-guest Lee Baker added the circular-financing angle: “This circular financing is a dynamic of borrowing from Paul to pay Paul. It works for a while, but then at some point it just doesn’t work anymore.”
Palantir and Cloudflare Show How Far AI Multiples Can Stretch
Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR | PLTR Price Prediction) is the closest public comparable to Anthropic’s target multiple. The company trades at a 67.94 price-to-sales ratio after posting Q2 2026 revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% year over year, with U.S. commercial revenue up 149% and a practically unheard-of Rule of 40 score of 155.
CEO Alex Karp told investors on the August 3, 2026 call that Palantir is “fully aligned with what’s right and what’s good and what actually works well in an enterprise,” and full-year guidance was raised to $8.15 to $8.158 billion. Shares are down 2.09% year to date.
Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) is another stock trading at a multiple that a front-runner in the AI era might deserve. Q2 revenue reached $696.1 million, up 36% year over year, and shares have advanced 60.17% year to date. CEO Matthew Prince told analysts non-human traffic passed human traffic online in May 2026 and framed Cloudflare’s opportunity around agent-to-content micropayments.
NVIDIA Sits at the Center of the Circular-Financing Debate
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) sits at the center of Baker’s circular-financing concern. Q1 FY2027 revenue was $82 billion, up 85% year over year, with data center at $75 billion. CEO Jensen Huang said “Demand has gone parabolic” and disclosed a newly deepened Anthropic partnership to expand compute across AWS, Azure, CoreWeave, and SpaceX AI. Total supply commitments now sit at $145 billion. Shares are up 20.87% year to date, and prediction markets on Polymarket assign an 85.5% probability of a new all-time high by December 31, 2026.
Key Takeaways
Anthropic, SpaceX, and OpenAI could all become exceptional public companies, but if all three arrive at valuations near 40-50x revenue, they will compete for the same pool of capital currently supporting premium multiples at other AI companies. The defining question for the next phase of the AI trade will be how much future growth is already priced into current share prices.
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