Anthropic Reveals $11.5 Billion Quarter, Six Investors Now Model a $2 Trillion IPO in October

Since Anthropic confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC in June, the company has gone from a private curiosity to a live test case for how big an AI IPO can get. The newest numbers, shared with prospective investors and reported by outlets including abc7news.com's Crypto Briefing wire, put Anthropic's preliminary second-quarter revenue above $11.5 billion, more than 14 times what it booked in the same quarter last year and roughly double the $4.73 billion it reported in the first quarter of 2026.

That acceleration is the headline number. The company also told investors it posted positive adjusted operating income for the first time, a milestone Anthropic has been building toward as it prepares for what six investors described to the Financial Times as a likely October debut at a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. That would roughly double the $965 billion price tag set in May, when Anthropic closed its $65 billion Series H round, and would rank among the largest public listings in history if it proceeds as investors currently expect.

The profit gap Fortune is flagging

Fortune's reporting adds a necessary reality check to the valuation chatter. The magazine notes that Nasdaq 100 companies trade on average around 34 times trailing earnings, meaning a $2 trillion Anthropic would eventually need annual profits somewhere between $59 billion and $79 billion to trade in line with its public-market peers. Operating income, which Anthropic just turned positive, isn't the same thing as net income once interest and taxes are factored in, and Fortune points out the gap between the two could be substantial for a company still spending enormous sums on compute and research.

Avery Marquez, director of investment strategies at Renaissance Capital, told Fortune that closing in on operating profitability is what makes the $2 trillion number "not seem so crazy" rather than proof the number is justified outright. For comparison, Fortune notes Nvidia earned $120.1 billion in net income on $215.9 billion in revenue last fiscal year, and Alphabet earned $132 billion on $403 billion in revenue. Anthropic is nowhere near either figure yet.

An export control still active since June

Tech Times' reporting surfaces a detail largely absent elsewhere: the US government forced a global shutdown of Anthropic's two most advanced AI models in June under an active export control, and that authority remains in place. Investors who spoke with the Financial Times acknowledged that Anthropic's revenue growth slowed measurably that month as a direct result. The Bureau of Industry and Security retains the power to suspend the company's top models again, a standing risk to the growth trajectory that isn't reflected in the bull-case revenue projections.

Those bull-case numbers are aggressive by any measure. Investors project Anthropic's annualized run rate will land between $100 billion and $120 billion by the end of 2026, more than tenfold what the company was running at the end of 2025, according to the Financial Times. One investor told the FT that an 800%-annual-growth company could justify a 30-times-revenue multiple even at "the incredibly low end," implying a $3 trillion valuation rather than $2 trillion.

IDC is considerably more conservative, pegging Anthropic's current annualized revenue at $40 billion to $50 billion, with consumer subscriptions contributing less than $2 billion. That leaves a $50 billion to $80 billion gap between independent estimates and what Anthropic's own investors are modeling, a spread wide enough that reasonable people should treat both the low and high case as unproven until Anthropic actually files its numbers publicly.

The Decart acquisition

Layered on top of the IPO buildup, Anthropic is negotiating what would be its largest acquisition ever: a roughly $6 billion deal for Decart AI, according to Bloomberg, independently confirmed to Reuters. Decart, founded in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Moshe Shalev, and Orian Leitersdorf, builds software that squeezes more efficiency out of chips during AI workloads along with generative video and world-model technology. Nvidia joined Decart's $300 million Series B in May, a round that valued the startup at roughly $4 billion, so a $6 billion sale would represent a steep premium over its last private mark.

Sources cautioned to Bloomberg, Reuters, and Tech Startups that talks remain at an early stage and could still fall apart. Neither company has commented publicly beyond a declined-comment from an Anthropic spokesperson. The logic, per multiple outlets, is straightforward: Anthropic has built almost everything in-house until now, and buying compute-efficiency technology addresses the inference bottleneck created by serving Claude to a fast-growing enterprise customer base rather than just training bigger models.

What's actually unresolved

No one, including Anthropic's own investors, has a confirmed IPO date, size, or valuation target. The Financial Times reported that Anthropic executives haven't named an internal figure even in private investor conversations. The $2 trillion number is entirely investor-modeled, the Decart deal isn't signed, and the export-control authority that froze revenue once in June hasn't been rescinded. Whether Anthropic's October timeline holds, and whether the eventual S-1 filing shows numbers closer to the investor bull case or the more conservative IDC estimate, will be the next real test of whether this valuation reflects the business or the hype around it.