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- Anthropic took a big step this week towards pipping bitter rival OpenAI to a public market listing.
- The IPO is set to test the broader appetite for pure-play frontier AI companies.
- Experts told CNBC that it’s not just the mega valuation that should be of note to investors.
This report is from this week’s The Tech Download newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
This week has been dominated by the hype around the highly anticipated IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.
When Elon Musk‘s SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, giving the company a record $1.77 trillion valuation, investors were left with one overriding question: Was it justified?
The same question now hangs over Anthropic and OpenAI.
Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaks on an artificial intelligence panel during Inbound 2025 Powered by HubSpot at Moscone Center on in San Francisco, Sept. 4, 2025.Chance Yeh | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Will Anthropic’s valuation stand up in the cold light of the public markets?
First blood to Anthropic. In the mad race to be the premier AI lab in the world, the company took a big step this week towards pipping bitter rival OpenAI to a public market listing.
Anthropic is likely looking to take advantage of the huge momentum it’s seen in recent months. It hit a $965 billion valuation and reported a $47 billion revenue run rate towards the end of May.
The company’s confidential filing of its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday capped off a remarkable few months for Anthropic, following a very public spat with the U.S. Department of Defense in February.
The listing, alongside OpenAI’s eventual move towards an IPO, will test appetite for pure-play frontier AI companies — a class of businesses that have up until now avoided the cold light of the public markets.
Gross margin
“Anthropic filing a confidential S-1 starts the clock on what will be the most scrutinized public offering in tech history,” Harrison Rolfes, analyst at PitchBook, said. But, he added that the number that determines everything won’t be the $965 billion valuation or the $47 billion revenue run rate — but gross margin.
That figure is so important because it refers to the percentage of revenue left after paying the costs of providing AI services — which are sky high.
“No one outside Anthropic has ever seen [gross margin], and it will either validate or collapse the entire narrative the private markets have been pricing for three years,” said Rolfes.
Supporting a high valuation is Anthropic’s unprecedented growth, Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC. He added that the company “appears to have the lead” in the market for frontier AI models, too.
But several very well funded competitors vying for the same market — including the likes of Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX — could disrupt that lead, Luria said. “Much of their current usage is for trials and experimentation and that may not sustain.”
The big picture
Whatever the case, the filing is expected to have far-reaching impacts beyond Anthropic.
“That disclosure will not only reprice private competitors,” said Eric Goodness, VP analyst at Gartner, “but also provides insight to every enterprise attempting to value and price the future cost of intelligence in their company.”
Anthropic’s filing, alongside that of SpaceX, which is targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation, will likely be the largest concentration of capital ever brought to market simultaneously, Rolfes said.
“The 2026 window either becomes the most consequential IPO cycle since the dot-com era or the most expensive lesson in narrative-versus-fundamentals that public markets have ever taught.”
News
The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a slew of measures intended to bolster homegrown chips, AI and cloud services as the bloc scrambles to develop tech sovereignty amid huge reliance on products and services from the U.S. and China.
Uber is slashing 23% of jobs in its people division as it seeks to streamline operations under the direction of new president Jill Hazelbaker.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to market its IPO at a fixed price of $135 per share, with a valuation of $1.77 trillion, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
Anthropic on Tuesday said an additional 150 partners will gain access to Mythos, its powerful AI model that has proven adept at finding software vulnerabilities.
Fintech startup Ramp is seeing a boom in business as companies turn to its software to help them rein in AI spending. It’s now valued at $44 billion.
Stock of the week
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Broadcom’s stock plunged after its earnings report.
Broadcom‘s stock plunged on Thursday after it posted weaker-than-expected revenue in its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the bell. Investors had been expecting a stronger AI forecast.
The company, which designs and makes customized AI chips for other technology names, led a broad sector sell-off as investors fled the semiconductor space.
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