Anthropic's IPO lands on Nasdaq, with October in view

The exchange is the least interesting part of this one. Reuters, relaying a Business Insider report, says Anthropic has picked Nasdaq for its IPO and has been targeting an October listing, with some estimates putting the company around $2 trillion, a figure that has not been finalized.

At a glance

• Business Insider reports that Nasdaq won the listing and that Anthropic has been working toward an October debut; Reuters relayed the report on September 13, with no price range attached.
• The valuation talk rests on a forecast of $190–200 billion in revenue for 2028, per Reuters, while Bloomberg reported the raise could match or top SpaceX's record $75 billion.
• Nothing is priced yet: the $2 trillion tag is an estimate rather than a settled number, and the report carries no share count, no range and no date inside October.

If you have not been tracking the funding side, Anthropic's Series H raised $65 billion, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, at a post-money valuation of $965 billion, according to Anthropic's own announcement. That round folded in $15 billion of previously committed hyperscaler money, including $5 billion from Amazon, alongside Micron, Samsung and SK hynix as infrastructure partners. In the same announcement the company said run-rate revenue had crossed $47 billion earlier that month.

Nasdaq gets the listing, and October is still the window

Picking an exchange is mostly plumbing. A company weighs listing standards, fees and the reporting obligations it signs up for, then files where it intends to trade. The venue itself tells you nothing about price, size or the day the bell rings.

The calendar has been circulating in reported form for a while. The Motley Fool, citing The Information, reported that Anthropic planned to release its IPO prospectus after Labor Day and was aiming at a public listing in late September or early October. The Business Insider report keeps October as the target month without narrowing it further.

The $2 trillion talk rests on a forecast for 2028

Reuters reports that the valuation discussion so far leans on a forecast of $190–200 billion in revenue for 2028. Bloomberg reported the raise itself could match or exceed the $75 billion SpaceX pulled in, which CNBC reported as the largest IPO on record.

The recent numbers have moved quickly. Analysts cited by The Motley Fool put Anthropic's first operating profit at roughly $559 million in the second quarter of 2026, on $10.9 billion of revenue, up from $4.8 billion in the first quarter, with annual run rate above $65 billion at the end of July against about $9 billion at the end of 2025.

The same report puts total losses since 2021 at $10 billion to $15 billion, and says the IPO could seek at least $130 billion, which would place the company north of $2 trillion, or about 30 times run rate.

Who gets to sell, and when?

Details leaked to The Information, as relayed by The Motley Fool, indicate existing shareholders may be allowed to sell shares as part of the IPO, that lockups could run longer than the standard 180 days, and that rank-and-file employees may have to sell through preset 10b5-1 plans rather than in post-earnings windows.

A lockup is the stretch after listing when insiders cannot sell. Nasdaq puts the usual range at 90 to 180 days for a traditional IPO, against a direct listing, which skips the capital raise and lets holders trade with no lockup at all. Long lockups plus pre-scheduled selling plans are the difference between opening a gate and running a drip line.

SpaceX and Cerebras, both 2026 listings, did neither, according to The Motley Fool: no shareholder sales inside the IPO, and tiered lockups that release tranches over time. SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares at $135 in its June Nasdaq debut, valuing it at $1.77 trillion, per CNBC; The Motley Fool reports the stock ran to $226 within days, fell as low as $105, then sat at $141 on September 2.

Every large number here is reported rather than filed: the $2 trillion tag is an estimate, the raise size comes from Bloomberg's reporting, and the share structure is a leak about deliberations, not a term sheet. In our view the lockup is the choice worth watching, since a longer lock plus preset selling plans reads as an effort to avoid the swing SpaceX's stock took after June.

What the prospectus must show

The next hard document is the prospectus, which turns all of this into a share count, a price range and audited financials. Until it lands, no day inside October has been named and no range has been reported. Two lines are worth checking first when it does: whether existing shareholders can sell into the deal, and how long the lockup actually runs.