Anthropic expects revenue of $190 to $200 billion by 2028. That figure would serve as the basis for how bankers and investors value the AI company’s upcoming IPO. Wall Street is thus looking two years ahead, which is unusual for IPOs.
This is according to sources cited by Reuters. The company itself reported a revenue run rate of $47 billion as recently as May. This is not actual revenue, but rather the current sales pace extrapolated to a full year.
Bankers use enterprise value-to-revenue multiples based on forecasts. This is standard practice for fast-growing software companies without a mature profit profile. Looking two years ahead is less common. Still, there are comparable cases. Investors in Cerebras Systems cited 2028 expectations this year, and for SpaceX, the forecasts even extended to 2029.
Why EBITDA isn’t being considered
For established companies, profit carries more weight. According to sources, Anthropic’s current EBITDA, that is, operating profit before depreciation, does not meet what investors expect at scale. The company spends large sums on GPUs, computing capacity, model training, inference, and personnel. These expenses may shrink as a percentage of revenue as the company grows.
In recent months, the pace of investment in AI has actually caused share prices to fall for popular tech stocks, including companies seen as comparable to Anthropic.