AI in action · Markets

Investors Are Now Discussing a $1.5 Trillion Valuation for Anthropic's IPO, Down From $2 Trillion, After Growth Slowed to 45% a Quarter

Reuters reported on October 15, 2026 that investors who attended Anthropic's investor day in San Francisco discussed a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for its planned November listing, below the $2 trillion previously expected. The company told them third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the second quarter to $16.8 billion and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis; second-quarter revenue had more than doubled. Nothing has been filed.

Oct 19, 2026

The largest initial public offering in history is being repriced before it has been filed. Reuters reported on October 15, 2026, citing three people who attended Anthropic's investor day in San Francisco the previous day, that investors discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion for the AI company's planned November listing, down from the roughly $2 trillion that had been expected into the autumn. Anthropic has not commented, no prospectus has been published and the figures come from people briefed rather than from filings; Dealroom reported that some potential investors were disappointed enough to argue that bankers should set expectations below $1.5 trillion.

The numbers behind the reassessment were strong by any standard but the one the market had set. Anthropic told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the second quarter to $16.8 billion and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis. In the second quarter revenue had more than doubled, to $11.6 billion. A company growing 45% in a quarter is still on course to triple in a year; what changed is the slope, and at a $2 trillion valuation the slope was the whole case.

The second worry investors raised, according to the reports, is leverage. The AI companies' build-out of data centres is increasingly financed with borrowed money, and the week of the investor day was the week in which that financing was repriced across the market: CoreWeave's bonds fell into distressed territory, its credit default swaps hit a record, the IMF counted $650 billion of debt inside the sector's circular financing deals and the Nasdaq had its worst week since June. The Seoul Economic Daily listed the reports of Anthropic's lowered valuation among the reasons Korean chip investors stayed cautious into Monday.

The arithmetic is still extraordinary. At $1.5 trillion Anthropic would list at roughly 22 times its annualised third-quarter revenue and above the private valuation of about $965 billion that Dealroom records from May; a listing before Thanksgiving would make it the largest IPO ever by a wide margin. The reports say the company's own view of its growth has not changed. What has changed is the market it is listing into, in which the question investors asked in Bangkok, Frankfurt and Washington last week, whether AI capabilities really require as much investment as is being made, is now being asked of the company that sells the capabilities.

For anyone considering the shares when they list, the lesson of the past week is that a 25% move in the discussed valuation of a private company happened on no change in its own disclosed numbers. The price of an IPO is set by the last investor needed to fill the book, not by the first, and in October 2026 that investor has become more expensive to find.

Sources: Reuters, via CGTN — Anthropic investors eye lower valuation as growth cools before IPO (Oct 16, 2026); Dealroom — Anthropic's rapid but slowing growth could weigh on IPO valuation (Oct 2026); Seoul Economic Daily — KOSPI Rebound Faces Test as AI Earnings Take Center Stage (Oct 19, 2026)