Nvidia Anchors Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO

Nvidia is now in talks to commit up to $10 billion as an anchor investor in Anthropic's IPO, buying shares before the offering is marketed broadly to signal confidence and help attract other investors^[1]. The arrangement folds neatly into a relationship where Nvidia is already Anthropic's primary chipmaker: as one analysis put it, 'the landlord - the provider of the essential compute infrastructure - is now financing the tenant's exit'^[2]. It is not the first time Nvidia has put capital behind its own customer. In November 2025, Nvidia and Microsoft agreed to invest up to $10 billion and $5 billion respectively in Anthropic, while Anthropic committed to spend $30 billion on Microsoft Azure compute^[3]. Reddit's wallstreetbets crowd reads the anchor talks as an extension of that same circular-financing loop - Nvidia funds Anthropic, Anthropic buys Nvidia chips, Nvidia books the resulting revenue - though the debate there splits between commenters calling it manufactured demand and others noting Nvidia's underlying GAAP profits are real regardless of where the capital originated.

The current record belongs to SpaceX, which debuted in June 2026 at a $1.77 trillion valuation and raised about $85.7 billion^[4]. Anthropic's reported target - up to $100 billion raised at a valuation around $2 trillion, with some reports citing figures as high as $2.3 trillion - would not just tie that record, it would clear it by a wide margin. A Morningstar markets editor put it plainly: the offering would 'likely be the largest IPO ever, surpassing SpaceX which is currently the largest IPO by a wide margin'^[5]. Reaction on X has largely relayed the news at face value, with commentary leaning toward awe at the sheer scale rather than skepticism of the headline number itself - the skepticism shows up elsewhere, in whether that valuation can hold once shares actually start trading.

The valuation case rests on a steep revenue trajectory: Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate reportedly grew from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to roughly $65 billion by mid-2026, with internal projections near $190 billion by 2028^[4]. That is the kind of forward-looking, multi-year extrapolation that a $2 trillion valuation - or, per some reports, $2.3 trillion - ultimately depends on^[6]. It is also up sharply from Anthropic's own $965 billion Series H mark set just months earlier^[4], meaning the IPO target more than doubles the company's most recent private valuation. Not everyone is convinced the headline number will survive the roadshow: discussion around the deal has centered on whether banks are deliberately lowballing the initial figure the way they reportedly did with SpaceX, only to reprice meaningfully higher once institutional demand is actually tested.

Anthropic is not the only frontier lab eyeing a public listing - OpenAI has also been reported to be pursuing an IPO after raising $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation^[7]. Anthropic moving first, and targeting a close before the November 2026 U.S. midterm elections, would let it set the market's reference points on growth rate, risk profile, and the credibility of a near-term path to profitability before OpenAI's own listing arrives^[7]. That timing pressure sits alongside Anthropic's broader compute alliances: beyond Nvidia and Microsoft, Anthropic holds a roughly $100 billion, 10-year Amazon deal for Trainium capacity^[8]and access to up to a million Google TPUs^[9], underscoring how thoroughly its growth story is now underwritten by the same hyperscalers and chipmakers it depends on for capacity.