Anthropic Could Be Worth $2 Trillion on the Stock Market. Here Is What That Means for Its Early Backers.

Anthropic is valued at $965 billion in its latest private market deal, and it is expected to list its shares publicly this year at a valuation of as much as $2 trillion, according to TechCrunch.

Startups raise money in rounds, and each round is usually named with a letter. Investors buy a slice of the company in exchange for their cash.

Early investors have seen their stakes grow quickly. Eric Schmidt invested in Anthropic's Series A round in 2021, when the startup was valued at $461 million. He owns about 1% of the company, a stake worth nearly $10 billion at the current private valuation.

Iconiq put $6 billion into the company last year, when it was valued at $183 billion. That stake is now worth $17 billion. Menlo Ventures led the Series D and has invested more than $1 billion over time. Its stake is now worth $14 billion.

Sequoia invested $3 billion earlier this year, when the company was valued at $380 billion, for about 1% ownership.

Spark Capital's path is the steepest of the group. It invested $75 million in the 2023 Series C round, when the company was valued at $5 billion. That position has grown more than 90-fold, to $7 billion. Spark is the only venture capital firm known to hold a board seat at Anthropic.

Sound Ventures, launched by Guy Oseary and Ashton Kutcher, invested $35 million in the same Series C round. It later added $400 million.

The company's valuation has also climbed fast. Anthropic completed a $13 billion Series F, led by ICONIQ, in September 2025. That round valued the company at $183 billion after the new money came in, which is called the post-money valuation.

In February 2026, it announced a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion post-money valuation, led by GIC and Coatue. In May, it raised $65 billion in a Series H led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital.

Earlier in the year, TechCrunch reported that the company was targeting a valuation of about $900 billion, and that buyers had indicated they had $2 billion in cash ready to spend. On June 1, Anthropic said it had confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC. An S-1 is the registration document a company files with the US Securities and Exchange Commission before selling shares to the public.

Some of the company's operating figures have also been disclosed. Reuters reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, up 45% from the previous quarter. The same outlet, citing Anthropic's IPO prospectus, reported that the company lost $42 billion in 2025 and spent $7.33 billion on compute. Compute means the computer chips and data centers that train and run AI models.

Anthropic has also said that roughly 20% of its shares will be dedicated to the public good, through a public benefit fund it described in an announcement on October 18.

The broader context here is the gap between the revenue line and the loss line. A company growing revenue at this pace, while paying compute bills at the 2025 scale, is likely to be valued by public investors on what they expect its profit margins to become. Think of a shop that doubles its sales but spends more than it earns on rent and stock. Buyers look at where it is heading, not only where it has been.

The jump from a private value of $965 billion to a public target of up to $2 trillion depends on the market accepting that path. Private values are set in funding rounds and secondary sales. They come with different disclosure rules, and they are harder to sell than a stock listed on an exchange.

For the backers, the math is simpler. An ownership percentage stays fixed after a funding round, so a stake's value moves only with the company's valuation. Schmidt's roughly 1% at $965 billion comes to nearly $10 billion. Spark's position, bought at a fraction of today's value, has grown with each higher valuation.

A stock market listing would turn those paper gains into shares that can be sold. Lockups, which are rules that stop insiders from selling for a set period, would apply. So would the regular reporting rules that come with a public offering.

In my view, the bigger question for the tech industry is what a public Anthropic makes possible for the infrastructure behind it. Compute is the largest item in the company's reported costs, and a listed company could raise money in a different way to pay for that buildout. Whether the money goes toward better AI models, cheaper ways to run them, or more data centers should become clearer in the company's prospectus and its first earnings reports.

For now, the company is growing fast, spending heavily, and preparing to ask public investors to price the difference.