Anthropic Is Chasing a $2 Trillion IPO. Its Most Powerful AI Model Is Raising a Big Red Flag

The AI market has entered a new phase. Early buyers were willing to pay almost any price for the most capable models, but businesses are now asking a more ordinary question: How much intelligence do we actually need for the job? 

That shift is important because frontier AI companies have built their valuations around enormous spending on chips, data centers, and model training. Anthropic sits at the center of that bet. The private AI company is reportedly preparing for an October IPO at a valuation of $2 trillion or more — potentially surpassing the record set by SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction), which went public in June at $1.77 trillion.

The $200 Billion Revenue Bet

Anthropic’s growth numbers explain why investors are willing to entertain a $2 trillion valuation. Its annualized revenue run rate jumped from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $47 billion in May and more than $65 billion by the end of July. Reuters reported that Anthropic is projecting roughly $190 billion to $200 billion of revenue in 2028.

A $2 trillion valuation against $200 billion of 2028 revenue would represent roughly 10 times sales. That’s hardly a bargain, but it looks less extreme if Anthropic can actually compound revenue at anything approaching its current pace.

There is evidence supporting the bull case. Anthropic told investors it had 6,000 customers spending at least $100,000 annually, while it recorded its first adjusted operating profit in the second quarter and expects to remain profitable in the third.

But a new Financial Times report introduces a problem that investors cannot simply wave away.

The Most Expensive Model Isn’t Winning

According to the site, spending on Anthropic’s most powerful and expensive model, Fable 5, has plateaued at only about 11% of spending on Anthropic’s tools more than two months after launch. The data comes from Ramp’s analysis of corporate spending. More importantly, Anthropic’s cheaper Opus 5 had already surpassed Fable 5 in business spending shortly after its late-July release.

That does not mean Anthropic’s $200 billion forecast has suddenly collapsed. It does mean the Financial Times has identified a potentially important weakness in the growth model investors are being asked to finance.

Frontier labs have been spending billions developing increasingly capable models on the assumption that customers will pay for that capability. If businesses instead choose cheaper models that are “good enough,” the economics change.

And competitors are making that choice easier. OpenAI’s annualized revenue has climbed above $40 billion, according to the Financial Times, while its GPT 5.6 models are priced below Fable 5. Open-weight models from China and elsewhere add another source of price pressure.

The Real Risk Rises, but It’s Not a Death Sentence

The report does not say Anthropic’s overall growth has stopped. Quite the opposite: $65 billion of annualized revenue in July was up 38% from May’s $47 billion figure and more than seven times the $9 billion run rate at the end of 2025.

The warning is narrower than that. Customers may be becoming more price-sensitive, potentially undermining the assumption that every new generation of frontier models will command higher spending.

If Anthropic can monetize Claude coding tools, enterprise deployments, and cheaper models while continuing to improve margins, Fable 5 does not need to become the company’s biggest revenue generator. But if premium-model demand weakens while the cost of developing frontier AI keeps rising, the path from $65 billion today to $200 billion in 2028 becomes much harder.

Key Takeaway

In short, the Financial Times has not disproved Anthropic’s growth story. It has identified the biggest question investors should ask before paying $2 trillion for it: Does AI progress translate into more customer spending, or simply better performance at lower prices?

Anthropic’s revenue trajectory remains extraordinary, but a $2 trillion IPO leaves little room for a growth slowdown.

For investors, the smart move is to watch the economics, not just the headline revenue. If Anthropic reaches its $190 billion to $200 billion 2028 target while expanding profitability, the valuation could eventually make sense. If customers increasingly decide that cheaper models are good enough, the $2 trillion price tag could prove to be pricing tomorrow’s AI market before tomorrow has arrived.

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