While most of the business world and business press is waiting on pins and needles for Anthropic to drop its S-1, perhaps no elite group is more fired up than the early investors who appear to have made the bet of their careers.
Fortune spoke this week to one such investor, a long-term Anthropic backer. This investor did not want his name printed, so that he could speak freely. His big prediction: He expects Anthropic to leapfrog SpaceX by notching the biggest IPO of all time. Put simply, he sees the initial pricing as below the company’s reported target of $2 trillion but expects a giant “pop” once the stock starts trading: “I think the IPO shares will be priced at around $1.8 trillion, but that we’ll see a ‘trading value’ once the shares start changing hands of $2.3 to $2.4 trillion.” By contrast, SpaceX closed on its opening day at a market cap of $2.1 trillion, and is currently hovering at $2.03 trillion. The VC believes that the $2.3 to $2.4 trillion reflects Anthropic’s underlying worth, and not just a sudden post-IPO burst that will quickly fade.
What inspired this investor to buy in early? “I originally invested in Anthropic because they were less consumer-oriented and more of an enterprise play, and made a huge hit with Claude,” says the investor. “Why will they go out at such a huge valuation? Because they’re perceived as the top name in foundation models, the premier foundation model-builder,” and that’s a huge advantage in their enterprise business. Anthropic’s “position in foundation shows it’s not a flash in the pan.” (Foundation models are so valuable because they’re general-purpose platforms trained on giant datasets for a wide variety of uses, including large language models, computer vision, robotics, and agentic workflows.)
As for Anthropic versus archrival OpenAI, the investor declares, “OpenAI started going more after the consumer, and Anthropic more after enterprise. They’re both really good companies, and they leapfrog each other in the power of their models at any particular time. They’re both chaotic, but I feel that Anthropic’s a little less chaotic.” [Anthropic derives around 80% of its revenue from enterprise customers, and OpenAI’s growing fast in that space, with the business side reaching around half of total sales.]
Part of the appeal was more atmospheric. “I find that Anthropic had a little more soul than OpenAI. Dario Amodei is pretty principled about the kind of company he wants,” says the VC.
Of course, everyone will be comparing the Anthropic IPO to the spectacular SpaceX premiere and also contrasting the two companies’ timetables for getting to big profitability. For our VC, Anthropic will get there first. “SpaceX is basically a play on Elon Musk who’s arguably the greatest entrepreneur in many generations, including Steve Jobs. But the SpaceX story will take a while to play out.”
Not so for Anthropic. In fact, this VC isn’t bothered that Anthropic will start as a public company sporting a gigantic valuation that will require immense profit growth to justify. “Anthropic is not a story that takes a lot of time to play out. What it has going for it, it’s the fastest-growing company in history,” says our interviewee. “My guess is that prices will come down due to open models and not all will be done on foundation, but that usage will continue to explode. Anthropic can afford to slow down and still have huge value. It will continue to be one of these names where people say, I feel like I have to own it.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: fortune.com
