Anthropic Could Be The 11th Most Valuable Company in the World
Anthropic is closing in on a public valuation that would place it among the most valuable companies on Earth, yet a single glaring vulnerability in its business model has investors questioning whether that number makes any sense at all.
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The expected value range for Anthropic when it goes public is wide. Some estimates put it as high as $1 trillion, which, based on its revenue, would be far out of step with other pubic company valuations.
Among the largest companies by market cap, Samsung is at $1.1 trillion, putting it in 12th place, just behind Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) at $1.4 trillion.
How wildly high are AI valuations? Anthropic’s revenue run rate this year is $65 billion. It was likely slightly profitable in the last two quarters. Samsung’s revenue last year was $265 billion. Its operating profit in 2026 is expected to be $62 billion.
The main financial difference is that Samsung’s top line is growing in the low double digits. Anthropic’s top line could be 7x what it was in 2025.
The biggest risk with Anthropic is that it is a one-legged stool. Its revenue is entirely AI products. Aside from its huge semiconductor division, Samsung’s product lines run from appliances to TVs to cell phones. By most yardsticks, it is second behind Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in global smartphone units.
This revenue-source issue is key to investor anxiety about AI valuations. OpenAI and Anthropic have no plans to create large divisions driven by product extensions. (OpenAI is moving into chip hardware and consumer products.) Neither is expected to trigger a surge in their market value.
A new valuation battle about the market caps of Anthropic and OpenAI is in its early stages. Has AI grown too fast and beyond human capacity to control its future growth? The solution appears to be to slow AI development and put on “guardrails” so products can be inspected for their safety. However, it may be too late. AI may be able to dodge this kind of inspection. If so, is it worth more or less? It depends on what it does for revenue and a corporate culture that doesn’t want to be bothered.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
