Dear Reader,
Simmy Adelman here with Behind the Markets.
Earlier this week, for the first time ever, we got to see inside Anthropic's books.
The company's IPO prospectus leaked to Reuters on Monday.
And I have been going through it carefully ever since.
Here's what you need to know.
The Numbers
Revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to $4.6 billion.
In Q2 2026 alone — one quarter — revenue hit $11.5 billion.
Annualized, that puts Anthropic on track for somewhere between $100 billion and $120 billion in revenue by year end.
That is a staggering growth rate by any measure.
But here's the other side of that ledger.
Anthropic lost $42 billion in 2025.
Operating losses — excluding writedowns — came in at $8 billion.
The company spent $7.33 billion on computing and infrastructure last year alone, up threefold from 2024.
And they've committed to $518 billion in future cloud, computing, and infrastructure obligations.
$518 billion.
That is more than the entire GDP of Sweden.
The Valuation
Anthropic is targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion.
That would make it the largest IPO in American history — surpassing SpaceX's $1.77 trillion debut in June.
More than double its own $965 billion valuation from just four months ago.
To put that in perspective, $2 trillion is larger than the GDP of Spain.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are leading the offering.
Nasdaq is the listing venue.
The IPO is likely coming after the November midterm elections.
The Part That Should Make Every Investor Stop
Here's the part most people skipped past.
Anthropic's prospectus is 261 pages long.
48 pages describe the business.
80 pages describe the risks.
Nearly a third of the entire document is dedicated to what could go wrong.
And the biggest risk they flagged?
Their own product.
The prospectus warns — in plain language, in an official SEC filing — that Anthropic's AI models could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity."
That is not a casual disclaimer buried in fine print.
That is the company that built Claude telling you, on the record, that what they are building could end badly for all of us.
I don't say that to be alarmist.
I say it because it tells you something important about the moment we're in.
The people closest to this technology are genuinely uncertain about where it goes.
The Business Risks Are Real Too
Beyond the existential stuff, there are concrete business risks worth understanding.
25% of Anthropic's 2025 revenue came from just two customers.
Most of their largest clients are not locked into long-term contracts.
They could reduce or stop spending at any time.
Anthropic's own models cost more than 2.5 times as much to use as OpenAI's flagship — which matters as AI pricing continues to collapse.
And if actual spending falls short of a major Google commitment, Anthropic has to pay the difference out of its own pocket.
What This Means
This is one of the most important investment events of the decade.
When Anthropic lists, it sets the valuation benchmark for every AI lab that follows — including OpenAI, which filed confidentially for its own IPO in June.
When Anthropic lists, it sets the valuation benchmark for every AI lab that follows — including OpenAI, which filed confidentially for its own IPO in June.
And here's the thing investors need to realize.
You cannot buy Anthropic today.
You couldn't buy SpaceX before it went public either.
By the time you're finally allowed in, the insiders have already made most of the money.
That's always how it works.
But there are tiny, overlooked companies sitting at the center of this story — companies attached to Anthropic, to the AI infrastructure boom, to the space economy — that you can buy right now, before Wall Street figures out what they're worth.
We built a brand new newsletter specifically for moments like this one.
When the big story breaks, everyone talks about the headline company.
But a handful of tiny firms nobody is watching are where the real gains are to be made.
Dylan just named his top picks — including one tiny space firm he thinks could hand early investors up to 39X their money.
Have a wonderful Thursday.
I'll see you tomorrow.
All the best,
Simmy Adelman, Editor-in-Chief
Behind the Markets
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Written by Simcha Adelman