Jack Delaney, The Motley Fool Fri, November 13, 2026 at 12:40 PM EST 4 min read ANTH.PVT NVDA Trade NVIDIA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Anthropic is expected to go public on Thursday, Nov. 19, and its initial public offering (IPO) pricing is expected to fall in the range of $70 per share to $78 per share. On a fully diluted basis, the start-up could be worth approximately $1.4 trillion.
For investors, that figure signals that Anthropic is being valued more for what it could become than for what it is today.
Missed AI's "Act 1"? Act 2 Could Be 16x Bigger. Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn't buy Nvidia in 2005. But according to our analysts, we're only at the end of "Act 1"—the R&D phase. "Act 2" is the global rollout. Continue »
Anthropic is being valued as if its business is on course to be one of the world's most valuable operations. If that isn't the case, it simply wouldn't make sense for its market cap to be greater than Walmart (NASDAQ:WMT) ($1 trillion) or Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKA)(NYSE:BRKB)($1.3 trillion).
The good news for anyone considering investing in it, however, is that it's not just pure hyperbole. The company's revenue trajectory looks promising.
Revenue in the first nine months of 2025: $2.5 billion
Revenue in the first nine months of 2026: $33.2 billion
Anthropic is also demonstrating its potential through its customers' willingness to pay. Not only does it have 1,900 customers spending at least $1 million with it on a trailing-12-month basis, but it also has around 250 customers spending at least $10 million on the same basis. In addition, its net revenue retention rate of 900% suggests that businesses may initially adopt Anthropic's services slowly, but increase their spending over time.
There's a lot of reason to be excited about the Anthropic IPO. But even if the stock price climbs in the first few days of trading, it won't be a straight line to success, nor will retail investors get rich after just one day of trading.
Anthropic was founded in 2021, and its enormous IPO valuation target underscores both its rapid growth and the high expectations for the young company. And when so much of a company's potential future success is already priced into its stock, the company doesn't just have to meet expectations; it has to exceed them.
Once it becomes a public company, Anthropic will have to live up to analysts' forecasts, and the regulatory and competitive pressures on it are only likely to grow. Its spending will also be more closely scrutinized if it overshadows revenue growth.
Here's what everything boils down to: Anthropic could become one of the most dominant AI platforms on the planet. But anyone who buys the stock at a $1.4 trillion valuation, or anything close to it, will be investing based more on what the company could become. That entails accepting the risk that it falls short of expectations, takes longer to generate the type of profits investors are anticipating, or fails to deliver meaningful gains at all.
That warrants a long-term investment horizon when buying the stock, to let it reach its full potential. It also means that if you want to add this AI company to your portfolio, you'd be best served to keep it as a small, speculative position. If Anthropic is on the path to justifying a $1 trillion-plus market cap, it's still a long way from doing so. That gives potential shareholders plenty of time to let the company prove what it's actually worth before making an investment decision.
Most investors think they missed the AI boat because they didn't buy Nvidia in 2005.
But according to our analysts, we're only at the end of "Act 1"—the R&D phase. "Act 2" is the global rollout, a massive technology build-out that Google's CEO says could be more profound than fire or electricity.
While everyone watches the chip designers, one "backbone" company provides the critical technology that Nvidia and AMD literally cannot function without. We've detailed this under-the-radar player in our new AI Playbook.
Jack Delaney has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Anthropic Set Its IPO Share Price Range at $70 to $78, Valuing It at Up to $1.4 Trillion was originally published by The Motley Fool
