On June 2, 2026, AI company Anthropic officially submitted a draft S-1 filing in secret to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), kicking off the initial public offering (IPO) process.
As one of the generative AI unicorns with the highest valuation globally today, Anthropic’s listing process is not only a bellwether for the technology industry, but also profoundly affects crypto market fund flows and risk appetite. Data from the Gate prediction market shows that the current market-implied probability that Anthropic will complete its IPO before September 30, 2026 is 77%, while the probability of listing before December 31 is as high as 90%. This expectation already reflects strong consensus in the capital markets.
Meanwhile, Gate has officially launched its stock trading service and, from June 1 to June 30, rolled out a “one million shares stock airdrop” campaign. The total prize pool is ANTHROPIC stock worth $1 million. During the campaign, users can receive corresponding stock rewards after completing tasks such as making the first trade in the stock segment, reaching a specified trading volume, or submitting proof of their account with a traditional broker; a single user can earn up to 3.33 shares of ANTHROPIC stock (about $6,000). The related rewards will be distributed in the form of an equivalent U.S.-listed stock once Anthropic’s company stock is officially listed, deposited into users’ stock accounts.
How to assess Anthropic’s valuation logic and pricing anchors in the primary market
To determine Anthropic’s market value ceiling, the first step is to understand the valuation basis in the primary market. On May 28, 2026, Anthropic announced that it completed Series H financing of $6.5 billion at a post-money valuation of $96.5 billion. This not only set the highest single-round financing amount in the history of AI, but also caused the company’s valuation to rise from $38 billion within three months by 154%, officially surpassing OpenAI’s valuation of $85.2 billion as of March 8, 2026, topping the list as the highest-valued AI company globally.
Looking at the timeline of valuation leaps, Anthropic’s growth curve is extremely steep: in September 2025, it raised $13 billion in Series F at a valuation of $183 billion; in February 2026, it raised $30 billion in Series G, with valuation rising to $380 billion; just three months later, Series H reached $965 billion. According to PitchBook data, this growth rate set the fastest record in venture capital history.
The core variable supporting this valuation surge is rapid revenue growth. As disclosed by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, the company’s ARR has shown approximately 10x year-over-year growth for multiple consecutive years since its first revenue: about $10 million in 2022, about $100 million in 2023, about $1 billion in 2024, about $9 billion in 2025, about $14 billion in February 2026, about $19 billion in March, about $30 billion in April, and in May it exceeded $44 billion. On this basis, the forward price-to-sales multiple (P/S) implied by the Series H valuation is approximately 22x (using the $44 billion ARR figure). Compared with OpenAI’s roughly 30x to 35x P/S, Anthropic’s valuation multiple sits in a relatively reasonable range, but its ARR growth rate is significantly faster.
From the revenue structure perspective, there is a fundamental difference in the valuation logic between the two. Approximately 80% of Anthropic’s revenue comes from the enterprise segment. The number of corporate customers paying more than $1 million per year grew from a little over a dozen two years ago to over a thousand today. Its market share in enterprise AI spending rose from about 10% at the start of 2025 to over 65% by February 2026. By contrast, while OpenAI has a large consumer user base, its enterprise business accounts for only about 40% of revenue, and the conversion rate from ChatGPT Plus subscriptions has long been below 5%. The valuation premium assigned by capital markets is, in substance, recognition of the path to enterprise AI commercialization—ROI is clear and quantifiable (industry estimates put average ROI for enterprise customers at 3.7x), and stickiness is far higher than that of C-end products.
The investment roster in this round also sends an important signal about valuation logic. Series H is led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with co-leads including Capital Group, GIC, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, and others; Blackstone, Temasek, Fidelity, and more also participated. It even includes the $15 billion investment previously promised by cloud service provider(s), including Amazon’s $5 billion. Particularly noteworthy is that three major storage-chip giants—Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix—appear together for the first time in the shareholder list of a single AI company, positioned as “strategic infrastructure partners” rather than ordinary financial investors. In the context of a global shortage of HBM capacity, this builds vertical supply-chain barriers spanning from chip raw materials to compute power.
In addition, Anthropic expects to turn a quarterly operating profit positive in the second quarter of 2026, making it likely the first profitable company in the AI model industry. From a cash-flow perspective, the company signed a decade-long infrastructure agreement with Amazon totaling over $100 billion. It commits to invest $200 billion over the next five years to purchase Google Cloud and TPU services, and also reached a three-year compute purchase agreement with SpaceX totaling about $45 billion. These strategic expenditures that lock in long-term compute costs will be reflected in the form of depreciation and amortization in the S-1 filing, affecting the short-term income statement but strengthening long-term competitive barriers.
Overall, assessing Anthropic’s valuation logic requires a multi-dimensional framework: the stages implied by the financing round, the match between ARR growth and price-to-sales multiples, the share and retention rate of enterprise-side revenue, the depth of supply-chain vertical integration, and the pricing benchmark anchored by the last funding round before the IPO. After Series H, the market will closely track the relationship between its IPO offer price and the post-money valuation premium/discount, as well as whether the company discloses supplementary financial data during the SEC review period to support its valuation claim of nearly one trillion dollars.
Which key variables will directly affect Anthropic’s market value multiple
The market value ceiling is not determined by a single factor, but rather the combined outcome of multiple variables playing off each other. The following key variables are worth focusing on:
- Evolution of the competitive landscape: If OpenAI or Google’s Gemini releases a breakthrough version in the second half of 2026, leading to enterprise customer migration or intensified price wars, it would directly compress Anthropic’s profit space. Conversely, if Anthropic maintains leadership in long-context handling or inference efficiency, its pricing premium should remain.
- Regulatory risk actualization: The EU “AI Act” took full effect in 2025, and the AI regulatory framework at the U.S. federal level is also underway. While Anthropic’s safety approach has relatively lower compliance costs, if regulatory standards further tighten, it could limit the iteration speed of its models or increase disclosure obligations, affecting market expectations.
- The IPO pricing window and market sentiment: The overall valuation level of the U.S. tech sector in 2026 is in a historical mid-to-high range. Changes in interest-rate policy will directly affect the valuation model for growth stocks. If the Federal Reserve releases signals of rate cuts in the second half of 2026, tech-stock valuations could expand further, lifting Anthropic’s first-day performance.
- Enterprise customer retention rate and ARPU changes: According to industry data, Anthropic’s enterprise customer net revenue retention (NDR) is about 120% to 130%, slightly below industry-leading SaaS companies’ 140% or higher. If the retention rate declines, it will prompt the market to question the strength of its long-term moat.
How will Anthropic’s IPO impact risk appetite in the crypto world and the artificial intelligence track?
Anthropic’s IPO is not just a corporate capital event—it’s a catalyst for the entire AI track within the crypto market. Historically, Coinbase’s direct listing in 2021 triggered a round of valuation repricing for crypto infrastructure projects. Similarly, after Anthropic’s listing, the following directions may benefit from spillover effects:
- Decentralized compute and storage projects. Anthropic’s training and inference require massive compute resources, and centralized cloud service providers have stronger pricing power. If the proportion of compute costs disclosed after Anthropic’s listing continues to rise, it may draw market attention to decentralized compute networks.
- AI agent protocol types. As the commercialization of large-model capabilities takes hold, on-chain AI agent use cases are increasing. If Anthropic’s enterprise APIs interact with smart contracts, new application scenarios could emerge.
- Valuation anchoring for the crypto AI sector. Many AI-related tokens in today’s crypto market lack a reference framework for valuation. As a mature publicly listed company, Anthropic’s financial metrics—such as price-to-sales and gross margins—will become important benchmarks for comparison across primary and secondary markets.
However, an increase in risk appetite tends to be bidirectional. If Anthropic’s stock performance after listing falls short of expectations or a major security incident occurs, it could lead to a sentiment-driven pullback across the entire AI track (including related assets on the crypto side). This kind of linkage effect has been validated multiple times during Nvidia’s earnings releases in 2025.
Pre-IPOs mechanisms and how fractional-share trading add to the traditional IPO model
In a traditional IPO process, ordinary investors often cannot participate at the IPO price; they typically need to wait until the stock is listed on an exchange to buy. Pre-IPOs mechanisms, to a certain extent, alleviate this asymmetry.
Gate previously launched SpaceX stock (SPCX) through its Pre-IPOs functionality, giving investors a channel to obtain shares before the official listing. Although the official announcement has not confirmed whether it will launch Anthropic’s Pre-IPOs product, given the level of market attention and Gate’s expansion direction for its stock trading service, this possibility is worth monitoring.
Fractional-share trading is another important innovation that lowers the participation threshold. Traditional brokers usually require whole-share trading, while Gate supports purchases starting from 0.01 shares. That means investors can participate in Anthropic’s investment with tens of dollars. This low-threshold design is especially suitable for crypto market user habits—users are already accustomed to high liquidity and fragmented, fractional trading.
From a more macro perspective, combining Pre-IPOs with fractional-share trading effectively reconstructs capital flow efficiency between the primary and secondary markets. For a high-valuation-expected target like Anthropic, this mechanism can attract more incremental capital, thereby supporting valuation.
FAQ
Q: When does Anthropic expect to formally go public?
A: Based on Gate prediction market data, the market is pricing a 77% probability of its IPO occurring before September 30, 2026, and a 90% probability before December 31. The actual timing will depend on the SEC review progress and company announcements.
Q: How can retail investors participate in Anthropic-related opportunities through Gate?
A: Gate has launched its stock trading service, supporting USDT trading of U.S. stocks and ETFs, and offering fractional-share trading with a minimum of 0.01 shares. In addition, Gate is running an ongoing “one million shares stock airdrop” campaign where users can receive ANTHROPIC stock rewards after completing the specified tasks during the campaign.
Q: What is the basis for Anthropic’s valuation reference?
A: Key references include its annual recurring revenue (ARR) of about $800 million, secondary-market valuation multiples for comparable companies (such as OpenAI), the entry prices paid by strategic investors, and the premium the market assigns to the scarcity of new shares.
Q: Will the Pre-IPOs feature be opened for Anthropic stock?
A: Gate has not released any official announcement. Previously, Gate listed SpaceX stock (SPCX) via Pre-IPOs; whether Anthropic’s Pre-IPOs product will be opened in the future requires further confirmation.
Q: What impact will Anthropic’s listing have on the crypto AI track?
A: Potential impacts include: providing valuation reference frameworks for projects such as decentralized compute and AI agent protocols; increasing market risk appetite for the entire AI track; and if post-listing performance falls short of expectations, it could also trigger sentiment-driven pullbacks.
