Reuters reported on September 11 that Anthropic is in talks with Nvidia to bring the chipmaker on as an anchor investor in its initial public offering. According to two people familiar with the matter, Anthropic is planning to raise as much as $100 billion at a valuation of around $2 trillion, and Nvidia is considering putting in up to $10 billion. The plan is still being discussed and could change; neither company has commented.
An anchor investor commits to buying a substantial slice of an offering before it's marketed to institutional investors generally. That slot typically goes to sovereign wealth funds, large asset managers, or strategic corporate investors with deep business ties to the issuer. Nvidia falls into the third category: Anthropic trains its Claude models on Nvidia chips.
Breaking Down the Numbers
If the $100 billion figure holds, it would be the largest IPO on record. Nvidia's $10 billion would account for roughly a tenth of that.
The valuation side has moved even faster. A $65 billion funding round in May valued the company at $965 billion post-money. Four months later, the IPO valuation being discussed is around $2 trillion, with some reports putting it as high as $2.3 trillion. Going from $965 billion to $2 trillion in four months is a bit more than a doubling.
On the revenue side, the public numbers are: Anthropic's annualized revenue was around $65 billion as of the end of July, and revenue projections for 2028 range from $190 billion to $200 billion — a figure cited in media reports, not a company announcement. Dividing the $2 trillion valuation by $65 billion in annualized revenue gives a price-to-sales ratio of about 31x; dividing by the $195 billion midpoint of the 2028 forecast gives about 10x. These are rough calculations that don't account for equity structure or future dilution.
Nvidia's Other Ledger
Nvidia investing in its own customers is itself controversial. It has previously made similar bets on companies including OpenAI and SSI, following roughly the same pattern: Nvidia puts in cash for equity, and the customer uses that cash to buy Nvidia chips. Critics call this a circular deal and argue it makes chip demand look stronger than it actually is.
Anthropic's own procurement isn't tied to Nvidia alone. The company has previously signed a $30 billion Azure compute commitment with Microsoft, and has separate compute and chip arrangements with Google and AMD. Amazon, as an early investor, already carries far more exposure on its books than Nvidia's proposed $10 billion. If the IPO closes anywhere near the rumored size, Nvidia would get a front-row seat — not a controlling one.
A Collision of Timing
Several reports say Anthropic's listing window points to before the November midterm elections, with pre-roadshow marketing possibly starting in mid-October. That timeline collides with another storyline: the same week, Amodei published a post calling on the entire industry to slow the pace of frontier-model capability gains, while Altman confirmed OpenAI won't go public in 2026, citing safety as the reason.
How a company squares pushing for a record-setting raise while also arguing for slower technological progress isn't addressed in any public materials. Slowing down is about the pace of capability gains; an IPO is about capital structure — the two aren't logically in conflict. But getting investors to accept "we're deliberately slowing down" alongside a $2 trillion price tag is the kind of thing that's likely to come up on the roadshow.
What's Still Missing
The entire basis for this report is two people familiar with the matter. There's no public prospectus, no underwriter list, no confirmed offering range, and neither company has confirmed the talks exist. Nvidia's $10 billion cap is a figure under consideration, not a signed commitment. The last time the market guessed at an October IPO timeline for Anthropic, the process only got as far as a confidential filing.
Sources: Reuters, Benzinga, CocoLoop, PYMNTS; the offering size, valuation range, and Nvidia's investment cap follow the account from people familiar with the matter as cited by Reuters, the annualized revenue and 2028 forecast are figures cited in media reports, and the price-to-sales ratios are editorial estimates.