Anthropic's Pre-IPO Credit Line Jumps to $15 Billion, Up 50% From Its August Target

Anthropic's pre-IPO war chest keeps growing. The AI company is close to finalizing a revolving credit facility of $15 billion, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. That's a jump from the roughly $10 billion target reported by ET Now and NDTV Profit on August 19, which itself was already a fourfold leap from the $2.5 billion five-year facility Anthropic locked in last year with Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Canada and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Morgan Stanley is leading the new facility, with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup in prominent roles, Bloomberg reported. Those are the same four banks Bloomberg has separately reported are steering Anthropic's IPO, which the company confidentially filed for in June with a Draft S-1 sent to the SEC.

Bigger Loan, Bigger Role

The mechanics here aren't complicated, and they're not new. In syndicated lending, a bigger commitment usually means bigger fees. When a company is heading toward a marquee IPO, a bank's size in the credit facility often lines up with its role in the underwriting syndicate. ET Now and NDTV Profit both reported that Anthropic asked its most active lead banks to commit around $1.25 billion each, with a second tier encouraged to put up roughly $1 billion, and less active participants expected to fall to $750 million or below.

That's a legitimate reason for skepticism. Banks angling for prestige IPO mandates by writing bigger loan checks looks, on its face, like pay-to-play. This is standard practice in large tech financings, not something unique to Anthropic. NDTV Profit and Outlook Business both pointed to SpaceX's playbook: SpaceX expanded its own revolver to $5 billion from $1.5 billion in May, a month before its record-setting IPO, with largely the same bank lineup carrying over from the credit facility to the offering. Newsquawk's analysis frames committed bank debt ahead of a listing as a readiness signal rather than a red flag, noting the real questions are whether the facility gets drawn or sits as standby, and what that implies about listing timing.

The Revenue Case Banks Are Betting On

The credit expansion is happening against a revenue backdrop that's moved fast even by AI-industry standards. Bloomberg reported on August 17 that Anthropic's annualized run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, up from roughly $1 billion at the start of 2025. Reuters has reported the company told investors and financial institutions it expects 2028 revenue in the range of $190 billion to $200 billion.

That $65 billion figure looks bigger than OpenAI's reported $40 billion-plus run rate, but Reuters flagged an important accounting wrinkle: Anthropic counts the full amount customers pay through cloud-based transactions as revenue, while OpenAI reports net revenue after Microsoft's cut. The two numbers aren't measuring the same thing, and treating them as a direct head-to-head comparison overstates the gap.

Anthropic's valuation has climbed alongside the revenue story, from a $380 billion post-money valuation after a $30 billion raise in February to $965 billion after a $65 billion raise in May, with the Financial Times reporting investors are now discussing IPO valuations of $2 trillion, or as high as $3 trillion in a bullish scenario.

Undrawn Line or Real Cash Need?

Anthropic's confidential Draft S-1 filing with the SEC came on June 1. The Information reported on August 27, with Reuters following the same day, that the public prospectus is expected after Labor Day, with a listing possible as early as late September or October. None of that is locked in.

Once that public filing happens, federal securities law puts Anthropic under strict speaking restrictions. Under Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, the company can't make statements that could be construed as conditioning the market for its stock, a restriction that loosens in stages but doesn't disappear until well after shares start trading. In practice, that means nearly everything written about Anthropic's IPO between now and its debut, including this facility, will come from banks, analysts and reporters, not from Anthropic itself. The company declined to comment on the credit facility, according to NDTV Profit.

The open question is simple: does Anthropic actually draw on $15 billion, or does it stay an undrawn standby line meant purely to project strength into the roadshow? Newsquawk's read is that undrawn facilities have historically preceded IPOs rather than substituted for them. Whether Anthropic needs the cash or just needs the optics won't be clear until the S-1 goes public and investors can see the balance sheet for themselves.