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Anthropic is reportedly weeks away from going public, and the valuation being floated could reach as high as $2 trillion.
That would top the price SpaceX fetched in its own blockbuster listing earlier this year. The Motley Fool’s view is that investors may be better off skipping the IPO and buying the companies that helped build Anthropic instead.
The three names in question are Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. Each is tied to the AI lab through investment or compute deals. Each already trades publicly and runs a business that does more than burn cash.
The filing: rocket-ship revenue, black-hole losses
Anthropic filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC on October 26, 2026. The shares are slated to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.”
The offering is expected to launch around mid-November, with the week of November 16 as the target. Investor marketing could begin the week of November 9.
The filing reports 1,368% year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 2026 and an annualized revenue run-rate of $16.8 billion.
Anthropic posted a net loss of approximately $80.7 billion in the first half of 2026.
The prospectus also lists more than $500 billion in long-term compute and infrastructure obligations, largely non-cancellable.
Not every estimate sits at the top of the range. Figures discussed after the filing put the valuation closer to $1.475 trillion to $1.5 trillion, which is still a staggering number for a company with these losses.
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The SpaceX yardstick
SpaceX went public in June 2026, priced at $135 per share. That valued the company at $1.75 trillion, and the deal raised approximately $75–86 billion.
At $2 trillion, Anthropic would leapfrog SpaceX. At the lower $1.475 trillion to $1.5 trillion estimates, it would land below the rocket company.
Why the backers look like the safer seat
Anthropic’s capital structure leans heavily on three tech giants. Their involvement is the backbone of the case for owning them instead.
Amazon has invested roughly $13–18 billion in Anthropic and holds a compute commitment of more than $110 billion.
Alphabet is tied to a commitment of approximately $114.5 billion covering its TPUs, Google’s custom AI chips, along with cloud services.
Microsoft holds a commitment of roughly $44.9 billion.
Those huge compute obligations sitting on Anthropic’s books are tied to the cloud and chip businesses of the very companies that backed it.
Buying Alphabet, Amazon, or Microsoft offers a way to gain indirect exposure to Anthropic’s rise without betting everything on a single company posting multibillion-dollar losses. Each of these giants also carries a diversified business underneath the AI story, including search, e-commerce, cloud, and software franchises.
What this means for investors
For direct buyers, the risk profile is stark. They would be paying a premium valuation for a company with an approximately $80.7 billion first-half net loss and more than $500 billion in obligations it largely cannot walk away from.
The backer trade is not risk-free either. Those compute commitments are only as valuable as Anthropic’s ability to keep paying for them, and a struggling Anthropic could eventually become a problem for its partners too. Still, the Motley Fool’s argument is that a disappointment at Anthropic would be a headwind for Alphabet, Amazon, or Microsoft, not an existential threat.
Where Anthropic lands relative to SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion will signal whether investors still have appetite for trillion-dollar AI bets at any price.
